An.Al: The Origins

By Athul Demarco

There are legends, myths, fables and parables. And the tale of the man with two heads is one of them. When the invitation to play is a dead, mutilated stray dog stuffed inside a gunnysack, you know that the game is going to be dangerous and that the only way to stop the madness is to understand it. And to hope that when the time comes, the knife finds a sweet spot. This is where it all began this is the story of the man with two heads.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fingerprint Publishing
• Release date: Jan 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9788172344863

Book preview

Who said nights were for sleep?

– Marilyn Monroe

Insanity, like misery, never walks alone.

Old Town was no stranger to either. The night, haunted and hunted by the moon and beaten into a cold grey, hid behind dark buildings: dilapidated, abandoned, marked for demolition, and forgotten by the rest of the city.

People had lived in these buildings a long, long time ago.

Not anymore. Not since the infamous plague of 1963. Now there were just piles of concrete and rubble. Now it was just a regular battlefield for regular turf wars between stray dogs and the burgeoning rat population.

And between the alleyways of Old Town now, walked misery. And Insanity. Hand in hand.

The air still, the night silent . . . she walked on, observing the warring pack of stray dogs. Some of them were sniffing and chasing their own tails; others howled and barked, snarling and growling out their mating calls to the bitches in their pack.

Her footsteps echoed like the steady drum beat of a marching band. She pulled her jacket’s hood over her head and drew its lapels closer together—it was a size too small for her, its colour now faded and indistinguishable. Her hands dug deeper into the jacket’s pockets, and finding a cigarette and a box of lights, she stopped for a moment to light it up. She pulled hard on it. Long, deep, and hard. What should the next move be?

Think.

The dogs turned around. Their playful conjugation interrupted. Angry. Alert. The air held an alien smell. They sniffed: cigarette smoke and her. They barked as a warning to this creature on two legs: don’t trespass, don’t intrude, don’t interfere. They circled and growled. Their eyes glowed with anger and intent. The hair on their backs bristled—a war-hungry Roman legion ready to fight the rebellious Gaul.

She didn’t feel like playing, not on that night, not when there were bigger and more important things playing on her mind. She wanted peace, quiet, and a plan. But the stupid mongrels were intent on fighting her for it and she was not one to back away from a fight. Not with Peter egging her on.

She saw him, the captain and commander of the pack, the leader of the feral rebels. Skin spotted like a Swiss cow, ears pinned back, sharp teeth dripping with drool and slobbering over the street, white and black hair bristling on his back like white noise, eyes gleaming a fluorescent green and yellow in the moonlight. When she saw that look on the dog’s face, she knew he would make for an excellent playmate. She didn’t care about the others. The manic wildness in the dog’s eyes reflected hers.

‘Always know where the attack is going to come from,’ she heard Peter’s voice whispering into her ears.

‘Never take your eyes away from the prey,’ he said, as she stepped sideways onto the pavement and started walking backward towards an abandoned building, all the while maintaining eye contact with her new playmate

‘Be aware of your surroundings, your environment. Use it to your advantage to isolate the prey,’ Peter instructed.

When she bumped against the door of the building, she found it unlocked. The barking reached a new crescendo and the dogs looked more menacing now. Did they mistake her retreat for fear? Stupid dogs.

The dogs could sense their kill slipping away and the alpha dog, realizing the same, leapt for her throat. She pushed against the door, opening it just wide enough for her and her-plus-one to enter.

With the refined skill of a ballet dancer pulling off a simple but highly technical plié, she took a step back, grabbed the alpha dog by his neck, turned around, and kicked the door shut as she fell down under the weight of the massive dog. The door jammed shut, scratching against the floor as it closed behind the two of them.

The odds were evened out now. Her lips curled up in a smirk and she grunted, her face contorting with effort as she rolled over on top of the dog, stuffing his mouth with his own leg. The howling, barking, and the scratching continued outside the closed door—background music to her party.

‘You really . . . really shouldn’t have,’ she reprimanded the dog as she caught her breath. She smiled gleefully as she attempted to grab the dog’s rear feet while ensuring that the foot already in its mouth didn’t come loose. Moonlight streaked through the broken and blacked-out windows of the building. The dog whined as it saw her baby-brown eyes turn black with murderous delight. Her smirk grew wider. With the legs firmly in her hold, she used her free hand to dive into her back pocket and fetched her trusted switchblade. In five swift and swish moves, like a trained game-meat butcher, she deftly cut away at the tendons joining the dog’s legs to his torso and distending his ball sac, turning the big, ferocious alpha dog into a big, cuddly, bleeding soft toy. She stood up, dusted herself, and wiped her face with her blood-speckled hands, smearing crimson onto her face.

As the dog lay there, withering and moaning in pain, she dropped her rucksack and watched the pale moonlight glisten against the dark, oily blood of the dog. She squatted next to the dog, marvelling at the spurts of blood the arteries threw.

‘Awww . . . are you in pain doggie?’ she asked, concern underlining every single syllable uttered in her innocent, childlike voice. The dog continued to moan, its body twitching in mortal convulsions of pain.

‘STOP MOANING YOU STUPID DOGGIE . . .’ she yelled, ‘ANSWER ME!’ Her shouts were muffled by the punches she threw on the dog’s furrowed face. When the fury of her punches finally stopped, so did the dog’s twitching—its skull broken in seven different places and its brain served as mashed potatoes, on the side, on the hard concrete floor plate.

‘Doggie? Doggie?’ she called out to the dog, softly . . . like a scared little girl looking for her beloved doll to comfort and reassure herself that the bogeyman won’t harm her. When the dog didn’t answer, she curled up on the floor and slept.

Trrrriiiinnnng!

The phone rang again. Andy switched on the bedside lamp, blinking rapidly in its harsh yellow light. The last fragments of a rather disturbing dream involving lumberjacks, Alfie, and a rather menacing dog snapping at his heels, and him chasing all of them in a state of undress were pounding inside his head. In a state of undress?! What?!

Andy wiped the sweat off his brow, realizing that the weird tune which had haunted him in his dream was the sound of the phone which had been ringing for the last twenty odd minutes or so.

The clock mocked him, its bright red LED lights flashing quarter to five. He moaned silently as he reached for the phone. Alfie was still snoring blissfully; his breath reeking of alcohol and a swirling concoction of smells which reminded Andy of the waste treatment facility of a rather popular brand of cologne. The pristine white pillowcase was stained with a darker shade of drool and vomit dribbling out of Alfie’s open mouth. He watched spit bubbles erupt and die at the corners of his brother’s noxious little orifice.

But none of this distracted Andy from the fact that somebody had dared call-up at a time when even the graveyard workers called it a night. The dead didn’t take too kindly to having their sleep disturbed either.

‘This better be good,’ Andy threatened groggily into the phone receiver. He wondered if he should switch off the bedside lamp, but decided against it.

‘Are you awake?’ The voice on the other end, heavy with an annoying French accent, yelled into the phone. There was a lot of noise in the background. It sounded like a bunch of men grunting, shovelling hard earth, and yelling instructions to each other to be careful.

‘It is five in the morning, Eugene. So he is not awake and neither am I,’ Andy replied curtly, rubbing his palm over dry lips and an oily face. The caller’s excited energy clearly upset Andy more than it normally would have. Eugene François, the caller in question, was a good-natured police officer who was their liaison. Eugene worked for the newly-created, but yet-to-be-named department under the purview of Superintendent Roth. The department had been created to address those cases which were clearly and creatively labelled as weird. The rest of the police force called it The Department of Weird or just DW. They even had a name for the motley group working in it: Dead Wankers; the short form had caught on, like most nicknames which are insulting do. But anyhow, by a special directive of the department head of this yet-to-be-named department, the twins, Andy and Alfie, had been hired to work as consultants, and it was Eugene’s job to bear their collective wrath and put up with their temperamental nature.

‘Désolé . . . Désole . . . I called to tell you that I need your help on a case and I have a strange feeling that you guys are going to love this!’ Eugene answered apologetically.

‘Couldn’t this have waited till morning? You know, when the sun comes up over the horizon?’

‘I am not sure. I suggest you both come and take a look at this yourself. I am sending a car around to pick you both up . . . it should be around the corner,’ Eugene continued, his infectious, albeit, given the time, slightly misplaced energy, creeping back into his voice.

Click. Andy hung up. He had heard all that he needed to hear. He couldn’t bear Eugene’s French-infused English so early in the morning. And having gotten to know Eugene over the years, it wouldn’t be surprising if the car was already waiting for them downstairs. The sky was still dark, just like his mood. Not the brightest of starts for the day, or any other day, Andy mumbled to himself. But he had a bigger and a more immediate problem at hand now: How to wake his brother up? If there was one thing Andy hated doing, it was waking his brother up.

‘Alfie! Alfie!’ Andy whispered, gently poking Alfie in his ribs, knowing well that it wasn’t in Alfie’s nature to respond to anything gentle and subtle.

‘ALFIE!’ Andy gave up on gentle-and-subtle and pulled Alfie’s hair and yelled, giving vent to his sour mood and his morning breath.

‘WHA? WHA?’ Alfie woke up with a start, books tumbling down his side of the bed, his hand instinctively reaching for the cricket bat lying on the floor next to the empty bottles of beer.

His brother’s sudden movement caught Andy off-guard and he found himself being involuntarily pulled towards his brother. ‘Eugene called,’ he spoke very matter-of-factly as he pulled up the duvet sheets to cover his exposed ankle and watched Alfie roll his tongue around his teeth and then masticate on whatever he found lodged in his molars. Disgusting.

‘Hmm? What?’ Alfie replied, his eyes still closed, and turned his head towards his brother.

‘Eugene. You know, the Frenchman you are bum-chums with? Eugene? He called,’ Andy repeated himself, his tone dripping with sarcasm like a pregnant honeycomb.

‘Yeah! So? It is five-fucking-AM!’ Alfie yelled as he tried squinting his eyes open and looked past his brother at the clock resting on Andy’s bedside table, partially covered by a well-thumbed copy of Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread. ‘Are you still reading that forest fellow? I thought you would be done with him by now,’ Alfie remarked as he continued to chew and rub his eyes.

‘He said he has a new case for us,’ Andy answered, ignoring his brother’s quip about his slow reading pace. The sight of Alfie sticking his tongue deeper inside his mouth and trying harder to dislodge whatever was stuck between his teeth only made Andy more irritated than he already was. And Alfie’s nonchalant and casually dismissive tone only added to this mountain-pile of irritation.

‘And this couldn’t have waited till morning?’ Alfie asked, chewing on the dislodged piece of meat before spitting it out.

‘Technically, it is morning.’

‘Well, you know what I mean.’

‘That’s what I said to Eugene . . . And don’t you think I would’ve also enjoyed a couple of more hours of sleep?’ Andy replied, thoroughly ticked off.

‘Now . . . now . . . don’t get mad . . .’ Alfie smiled consolingly and rested his head against his brother’s, pawing at his chest like a playful puppy.

‘He sounded pretty excited about whatever it was that was exciting him.’ Andy pushed Alfie away and wiped his face, brushing away the last vestiges of sleep. The dream was still running in a never-ending loop inside his head.

‘Eugene is always excited about something. What does that French bastard want now?’

‘I don’t know. He just told us to get ready and come. He said we’ll love it. He’s sent a car.’

‘Did he say anything about where we are supposed to go?’

‘No, he didn’t. I’m guessing the driver ought to know where.’

As they got out of bed and went to the window to look for the car, Andy hoped he had just dreamed up the phone call and that they could actually go back to sleep now. And even if he couldn’t go back to sleep per se, he just wanted to lie on his back for a little while longer with his eyes closed. It could have just been a bad dream, and he’d been having quite a few of those lately.

‘I see the car,’ Alfie pointed, as he lifted his head from his brother’s shoulder and waved at the driver.

‘The glass is frosted, smartass! He can’t see you. And why are you suddenly so excited? I thought you wanted to sleep some more?’ Andy remarked, unsure if he should smile at his brother’s childishness or be annoyed with his pendulous mood swings.

‘Hmmm . . . You want to take a bath?’ Andy inquired, knowing well what his brother’s response would be as Alfie dragged himself, against Andy’s will, to the coffee table, where his cigarettes and lighter lay.

‘Now? It’s not even morning yet! Anyway, let me have my first cigarette of the day. You know how I get when I don’t get my dose of nicotine in the morning,’ Alfie exclaimed as he stretched and yawned and looked wickedly at his brother.

‘At least, for the love of god and all that is holy, brush your goddamn teeth and rinse that mouth with some industrial-strength cleaners. You smell like badgers and raccoons made themselves a nest in there,’ Andy said in mock irritation, smiling at the bewildered look on Alfie’s face.

‘Sop be donutno were we boing?’ Alfie spoke as the two brothers brushed their teeth.

Andy rinsed his mouth and started applying shaving lather on his face. ‘What? Stop talking like a moron. Spit and talk,’ he replied, as he finished lathering his face with shaving cream and screwed the razor blade on.

‘So we don’t know why we are awake and where we are going?’ Alfie repeated himself.

‘No! But its time you finished brushing your teeth. You’ve been brushing your teeth for more than ten minutes now. You’re going to make your gums bleed. And why don’t you shave? You look like a pirate,’ Andy retorted.

‘I don’t look like a pirate! I look like a very handsome Robinson Crusoe.’ Alfie grinned as he surveyed and admired himself in the mirror. He chuckled as he caught Andy busy scrutinising his own handiwork in the mirror. ‘You missed a spot there,’ he pointed at a small cloud of shaving foam below his brother’s chin.

‘What do you think it could be?’ Alfie asked a couple of minutes later as he held one end of the shoelace and Andy looped the other to form a loose knot—just the way Alfie preferred.

‘It can’t be a robbery. Eugene wouldn’t bother us for that. It could be a case of arson or murder.’ Andy tried to hypothesize a logical and reasonable theory to justify their being awake at such an ungodly hour.

‘Hmmm . . . I hope it’s murder,’ Alfie exclaimed.

‘Oi! Easy now!’ Andy moved sluggishly, even as Alfie tried racing down the stairs.

‘I have a good feeling about this . . . And are you sure Eugene said that we would be happy?’ Alfie asked, opening the car door.

‘Yes. You are always happy when you have a new case,’ Andy replied, getting in after Alfie and shaking his head patronizingly.

‘Though, I really do wish he would have called a couple of hours later. I could have done with some more sleep.’

‘Being dragged out of bed at five in the morning is not really your thing, is it? Especially when you are hung over like a horse?’ Andy retorted with a smile.

‘Well, we don’t really have much choice in this matter now, do we?’ Alfie chuckled and rolled down the car window.

‘Look at you! Smiling like a kid who’s just been granted all his wishes by Santa this Christmas.’

‘What look? If you ask me, anything is better than just moping about in our flat, waiting for something exciting to happen. You said so yourself!’ Alfie said, turning his face towards the window and trying to hide the glee which was spreading its warmth across his face.

The brothers looked outside. Silent and stoic, each lost in his own thoughts, one smiling sinisterly and wondering what awaited them, and the other frowning and cursing nature for having played such a cruel trick on them.

‘Good thing that we don’t share consciousness and conscience, wouldn’t you say?’ Andy spoke, shredding the silence that had enveloped the car.

Alfie continued smiling, absent-mindedly running his fingers over the imaginary seams where their bodies were conjoined.

The car hurtled through the near-empty streets, cutting through the grey dawn and speeding towards where Eugene was waiting impatiently for the twins.

A long, long time ago, so long ago that she herself had trouble recalling it, Anita used to live in a small town called Roemerville with her parents, Lilly and Kevin Udall. Roemerville was the quintessential small town where adults kept their pornographic paraphernalia at the back of their wardrobes and where kids dreamed of becoming Bobby Fischers of the world. The kind of town where the only safe place for a secret was in one’s grave.

Anita was just another young girl, born to just another couple, growing up in just another small town. She was not the brightest of students in school, but neither was she a troublemaker. She did her homework on time and had her meals on time. She was quiet . . . lost somewhere in her own world. Easily forgotten, a flower on some floral-patterned wallpaper . . . On the surface, one could say Anita’s early childhood was neither different nor remarkable. But, as is the case with most things, there were aberrations and distortions.

As her body filled out the curves, Anita found herself in the spotlight and her audience was the school bully and his gang of fawning cronies, all thrilled and excited with the sudden realization that there was a young woman amidst them now. And before she knew it, Anita became the involuntary target of all their teenage angst and aggression and curiosity.

It all started off as an innocent little game of calling her names. But the boys grew bolder and their games became wilder. And though she tried hard to hide and be inconspicuous, it was not to be so. One recess, they dragged her to the restroom, tore off her shirt, pulled down her skirt, forced her to take off her knickers and then they pissed on her. They mocked her and egged her on to play with them. Anita cried foul, but there was no referee, no rules set, no fair play. They pushed her around and pulled her hair. They punched her and kicked her. And when they grew tired of the game, they left her lying on the bathroom floor, curled into a foetal position, her naked body covered with bruises and her intuition telling her that the game had just started.

Anita was a good-looking girl, that is, if you could look past the matted hair that fell strategically over her face to cover the bruises and the fingerprints from being slapped and punched around. It was easy to hide these bruises and injuries from her parents; they were wrapped up in trying hard to