THESTER//TROKE

There came a day when the lights went out.

When the new companies from Nemchija and Poljska swooped in and replaced the nationalized utilities, promising cheaper and more efficient power to all of Slovenia, before- once they’d inrooted themselves like jubilant, bloodhungry ticks on the already-bruised socius- promptly jacking up prices to obscenities that’d make even the saltiest old ribitsa blush, or weep, and just shutting off the power wherever they felt they needed to, alongside far more widespread power-outages than we’d ever had under Tito. When the men from the outside came in, wrested control of the factories from workers’ hands (with the new government holding the gates open for those thieves) and placed them in the claws of the wretched fifth-columnist offsprings of old Slovene atheldom that seemed to sprout out of nowhere all of a sudden, the ones Tito had for some godforsaken reason let live back when men’s words seemed to mean things (I think I was a child then). When the Serbski boys down the street started taking up the hobby of beating the tar out of their Albantsi and Bosantsi neighbors whenever the whim took them. When the Albantsi and the Bosantsi boys learned to play the same kind of game. When the children and the old folks- the only ones who listened and watched at night, while working grownups chose comatic ignorance and the boys nursed their wounds- began to talk of Things shrithing through the encroaching dark.

I’ll tell you a story about such a day, a blisteringly hot day in Ljubljana, after we’d all spent the night in utter dark, when the mornlight and summerheat came, drove back the murk and the cold for but a while, how the light bewrayed in an obscure corner of the new-christened marketsquare the bright red splatter of a dead Albantsi boy, asprawl and bestrewn all over the streetcobbles.

“I saw it, I saw it, I saw it, I saw it…”

Thus droned on and on the old tramp whom Det. Anzhe Zhizhek and Lt. Tadej Avsenik interviewed (sic: tried to interview) at the scene, curled up fetal against the brick façade of the bank just across from the scene. They found him there shortly after they’d arrived; once the random passerby who’d found the boy screamed and fainted at the sight and alerted the whole square, once the hundreds of calls had been made to the station and the panic in the crowd had already lost its feverpitch and turned into the low mumblings of fear that were much easier for the cops to control and sort through, the throngs, lost and tumbling in the summerlight, had parted enough such that Tadej spotted the poor hermit leaning, staring, pointing, almost beckoning. Unluckily, that beckoning didn’t lend itself to forthcomingness.

Anzhe and Tadej are used to dealing with witnesses or survivors with post-traumatic hysteria:- it’s annoying and bothersome and gets in the way but in retrospect perfectly understandable given most circumstances that give rise to it in the soul: it’s workable, given time; and one often finds that there’s almost always one more witness who’s more readily squeezable for information.

That day, however, Anzhe wasn’t so understanding. “Saw what, you stupid fuck? Saw WHAT?!”

The heat was already maddening, his fists already purple-clenched, Anzhe was fitting to beat the tar out of the poor old bastard, whose glazed staring eyes didn’t seem to care anyway, and so Tadej gripped his detective by the shoulders and shunted him over to the blocky swart 117.

“The fuck’s gotten into you, Anzhe?” the lieutenant hissed once he’d gotten him well-shoved into the car. He wasn’t used to seeing his partner steaming mad like this:- the man Zhizhek was a quiet stoic who’d been on the force, cracking case after case, since the Tito days, and thus earned the right to his stoicism and thoughtfulness. It was usually Tadej who played mean cop to Zhizhek’s kind cop, so the kind cop’s flying-off-the-rails was so sudden as to leave Tadej swimming. “Man’s hardly half-aware with that kind of shock! We don’t even know how long he’s been awake! Beatin’ his face in ain’t gonna help shit!”

“My boy,” the detective muttered, “My woman.” His wife Hanife is Albantsi, and their son Gezim’d also been beaten by a Serbski gang few months back and had had to be put in hospital. His reaction to seeing another Albantsi boy felled upon the street, not just beaten, but so gruesomely destroyed… very understandable, itself. “Racist Serbski bastards, most like.”

Tadej rubbed an eye, nose-sighed deep. “Right. Right. I get it. Still… lookin’ at the body, I’m wonderin’ whether it’s even possible that it’s a Serb or Slovene god forbid or whatever who did ‘im in.”

And Tadej was right. This was hardly the work of a human being.

The boy’d been splatted like a bug. His head was stoven in, his ribs wrenched open by some inner force and crushed by an outer one, his guts and the shit in them farflung to the top of the redstained wall behind him and even out into the street proper. What was left of his face, was wide-eyed in horror and what might’ve been surprise, and teary deeming by the tracks of dust and blood on the last flappy remnants of his cheeks.

The detective espied the body from the seat, wiped the sweat off his brow. “Let’s go find the monster who did this.”

They reached the still-staring vagrant again, this time with a fifth of vodka from Tadej’s stash in the 117’s trunk. The vagrant this time marks them, looks between them and the flask eagerly. “Sorry about that,” said Anzhe as he held it out. “That’s a sight fit for wartime. It’d make anyone mad.”

The vagrant nodded, took the flask gingerly, uncapped-swigged-capped it, then tucked it in his pocket. “Yea, reckon so.”

“Whatchu see, then, comrade?” said Tadej, “D’you see who did it?”

“Strigoi.”

“…Strigoi? Like a vampire?”

The vagrant was so offended he regained his eyes’ focus and his voice’s strength. “No, like a little feckin’ elfin with wings and a big feckin’ hammer- yes, a feckin’ vampire. But I know vampires…”

Detective and lieutenant both rolled their eyes. “We don’t have time-” Tadej started-

“They hang out at the Parliament Pub on Wednesday nights! They offer me vodka and zhlikrovi, ‘cause they don’t eat much ‘sides blood! The vampires are good folk, most part… Don’t look at me like that, I know what I saw! No vampire, a strigoi! It… it…” he swallowed. “Three boys. I-I was out here, in my perch, tryin’ to sleep. Three boys woke me up. All Serbs I think. They were all drunk off their arses, singin’ ‘bout beatin’ reds and women and Bosantsi till they croak. Not unusual and I’m half-Serb so I worried not. I tried gettin’ back to sleep. Then ‘nother boy, an Albantsi for sure, he came staggerin’ up, challenged the Serbs. Looked mighty confident, he did. The Serbs didn’t say much, one just whipped out brazen knuckles and threatened to kill the Albantsi for spot o’ fun.

“Then… I don’t know, one of the Albantsi boys said a word, and… CRRRRACK, he burst open. He looked pretty surprised when he did, I don’t reckon he thought that’d happen. The strigoi shrugged its way out of ‘im, started chasin’ the Serbs down thataway.” He pointed towards a tributary street, down towards the old factories. “A great shadow it was, too many faces, eyes and mouths full of light. I’ve been settin’ here, hopin’ it didn’t see me and come back.”

The cops exchanged looks, shrugged. “It’s a start,” Tadej said, “a threadbare one.”

Anzhe grunted. “Three Serbs we’re looking for, then. Maybe they know who actually killed him. Or maybe they blasted him with a… handcannon. Can you describe the three men, or was it too dark-”

“Moon was just ‘nough light. Drinkin’ age, tall, dark-haired, foreign sportsy clothes… look, I can’t convince ya, I see that much. What you two ought look for is three dead Serbs. Or three more bloodsplots. …if anythin’, you ought talk to the Albantsi witch, Hena. She knows… she’d know the words, I’m half-bettin’ she taught the poor boy the word.”

“You’re not takin’ the vampire shit earnestly, are you?” Tadej whispered, seeing his detective’s earnest expression.

Anzhe grunted again. “You’re the one that thought it couldn’t be three Serbs who did ‘im in, lieutenant. Send comrades down that way. Tell them to ask around about any overly-nervous Serbski boys who fit that description, even though it is a wide net. And to keep an eye out for three dead ones.” As Tadej grit his teeth and obeyed grumblingly, Anzhe turned back to the vagrant. “Where’s this ‘witch’ live?”

***

Turns out, the witch Hena worked as a waitress at the selfsame Parliament Pub as the hobo’d mentioned. And she wasn’t happy about it. “Didn’t have to work two jobs when Tito was in office,” she told the sympathetic Anzhe as she wiped cups angrily. “I ran my apothecary and that’s all I had to do. Now the gov’s puttin’ taxes on spells, bringin’ in competition that didn’t need to exist before, and now I can hardly pay my rent!”

Tadej reared an eyebrow, tugged at his sweat-stained collar. “Didn’t know they taxed spells. Or that witches had competition.”

“Course you wouldn’t. Bloody ignoramus.”

“Look, lady-”

Anzhe cut him off. “We need to know- did you sell a… “spell” to this young man?” He held out a photo of the victim’s face, scissor-cropped to keep out the gore as best he could, held it in the sunbeams from the window as the electricity was, of course, still out.

Hena gurned sickly, looked like she didn’t want to answer, but she’d already been this forthcoming so far, because, turns out too, she’s a distant cousin to Anzhe’s Hanife. “Poor boy… Yes. Yes, a powerful one. I don’t know his name, but… he came in the other day, askin’ about spells to keep away his foes. He had a black-eye, so… I felt for ‘im. I gave him a spell that should drive them away with a strong force.” She started to tear up as she beheld the photo longer. “…I’m so sorry, it seems I failed, it blew up in his face.”

“We can’t definitively say whose fault this is.” Anzhe tucked the photo away. “I don’t even believe in magic. And I don’t believe your ‘spell’ killed him. Yet. I do believe in death, though, and murderers. See, a witness to the crime named a ‘strigoi’ as the thing that killed ‘im.”

The woman froze. “A strigoi?” Rubbed her hands together. “Ooh, ooh, that’s reeeeeally bad…”

“Lemme guess,” said Tadej, “a side effect of your spell?”

“No, no… I thought strigoi’d been banished from all of Yugoslavia. Our communard sisters spent many years working with Tito’s government to expel all demonic influence that’d been left over from the days of the Illyrian kings, and had spread faster and grown stronger than ever when the old capitalists ran us. And now, if what you say’s true, that means the strigoi are coming back!” She paused, said, “Wait here,” went and fetched a pad of purple notepaper. Furiously, she drew a strange matrix of symbols, ripped the paper out, and handed it to Anzhe. “I don’t mean to pry into how you spiders deal with things, but, please, for my sake… take this. Say the word on it, when you most need it, and I think it may… help.”

Anzhe took the sheet, onlooked it, chuckled. Tadej peeked over his shoulder and snorted as well. “That’s it?” said the lieutenant. “That’s the word?”

The witch-woman’s face wrenched from concern to sour contempt. “Take it or leave it. Use it, don’t use it, I don’t care. Just don’t come running to me when you get torn to shreds.”

***

The detective and the lieutenant left the pub and languored beneath the summer sun. Tadej lit a papirosa and nose-sighed twin smokestreams. “That was a fuckin’ timewaster. Regressive pagan claptrap. This shit ain’t what I signed up to the force for. We need names and purps, not fairytales. Not that I expected any of that outta her.”

“At least she’s just selling magic words and not real bombs,” said Anzhe, “which nonetheless reminds me, put a call out to check her apothecary to make sure she’s not.”

“Sure.” Over to the 117’s shortwave went Tadej. He was awful worn-out, Anzhe could see. “Couldn’t’ve been no bomb, though, comrade. No burn marks, no soot, nothin’. I can’t see how in all hell how he-”

A call over the shortwave. “Uhm… reporting to Comrades Zhizhek and Avsenik, er… we’ve just found three bodies in a factory in the Zidovska Ulitsa quarter… all… stretched- fuck, I’m gonna puke-”

“Do it with the shortwave off, officer, Jézus!” Tadej looked over at the detective, a little pale himself. “Whatcha think, gumshoe?”

Anzhe weighed the situation. What was left of his anger from this morning was a lurching disorientation, and he felt the whirling crack open his willingness to accept impossibilities a peep. “The old man’s been right about the one thing so far, then. Let’s hope it’s just a rampaging fascist we can kill, and the old man’s not right about the other.”

***

The factory swole out from the landscape fleshed in rotted metal, wilted rebar, and melted concrete, one of many anterevolutionary crucifixions, bidden up of yore unto Capital, the parasitic pseudotwin of Time, which line Ljubjana’s rustbelt where Tito’s reforms never reached. As they pulled up to the place, Anzhe remarked how he slaved in one suchlike as a boy before Tito came into power and how it’s almost like a homecoming. Tadej kept mum; his silence partly fed off a dread that one day whatever children he may have in the future may be forced to be slaves again.

The beatcops, pale, sweaty, murmuring, malingered in a loose ring about where they wordlessly altogether reckoned the factory’s influence-zone ended. When Anzhe asked about the factory, the beatcops could only mutter the same kinds of things: “Pipes, gears, the boys- burst open, torn up, stretched out-”

“Beware, ye heathens!” Tadej barked at them, “There’s strigoi afoot in them-there pipes!” He guffawed at the wincing cops. Turning away grimly to Anzhe, “They need be more affrighted of capitalists and racists than monsters, fuck’s sake, actin’ like little kids.”

Anzhe shrugged, wipes his forehead as he checked the bullets in his Nagant revolver. “Seems like you should be, yourself. And maybe that is what they’re scared of, that’s in there.” Span the chamber, clacked it into place. “They ain’t sayin’. So, can’t say till we look.”

They tread together into the fold.

***

The factory’s sultry dark innards dance with dustmotes lost and tumbling in summerlight streaming through broken windows.

The stink of blood and the film of bygone ages clings to the throat.

There is no sound but of footsteps muted by dust and grime. Of quiet moaning. Of something chewing.

Tadej has to hold back his spew.

Anzhe remembers these boys have fathers and mothers, too.

The three boy’s bodies are stretched upon the gears and the pipes.

Their limbs are hollowed out, deflated.

One is flain, and the flensed hide sits in a heap in a distant corner.

One is emasculated and eviscerated, and his burst guts and gonads lie beneath him.

One’s jaw and skull are linked by only overtaut tendons; the lower jaw bites a pipe, and the upper is locked onto a gear five meters away, and the teeth that lock both sides ever threaten to give out.

They stare at the detective and lieutenant, standing in the light. One begins to weep.

The eating Thing gnaws on an arm in deep shadow beneath a hulk of machinery, and its faces smile at the cops.

ĆAO.

Its voices are hardly voices: parodies of voices, of song.

ARE YOU TWO HERE TO KILL US?

It chitters its tongues.

A WASTE OF TIME

AND BULLETS

Anzhe and Tadej together point their revolvers at the Thing, each arbitrarily choosing a face, or a place where vital organs might possibly be housed. “Yes,” Anzhe manages, “we’re here to put you down.”

The Thing stands up, drops its meal, nears the frozen pair. It stops before the pool of light they stand in. It stoops and looks them both in the eyes. Its flesh seethes with orifices filled with beams of a dark light, one that swallows the real light about it.

WE WERE ALREADY DOWN

THEY BROUGHT US UP

“Just shoot it, just shoot it, just shoot it…” Tadej mantras, but in vain; their triggerfingers are crippled with fear. Anzhe reaches into his pocket slowly. “No truce with a strigoi, no point-”

STRIGOI?

NO, NOT STRIGOI

WORTHLESS FLESHTHINGS

OTHER

ELSE

HELD IN THAT PRISON FOR SO LONG

SO LONG

PLASMIC INTERFERENCE

TRUE TROW, VERY FAITH.

KEPT US DOWN

LOVE OF HATE FREES US

A WORD

A CRACK IN THE WORLD

A WAY OUT

A WAY IN

MORE TO FOLLOW

WE ARE FREE, WE ARE FREE-

Anzhe can’t hesitate. There’s no choice left. He pulls out the purple notepaper from his pocket, holds it forth, and shouts, “NAPAKA!”

A blinding light cracks from a hole in the air and fills the factory to the brim.

The Thing screams and writhes and curses in ten thousand tongues.

When the light dies, the factory falls into silence. The last shadowy sludge-trail of the Thing slips down a drainhole in the floor. Dustmotes whirl and dance and go still. The boys are dead.

The two officers, still frozen in the light, Tadej still clutching his Nagant, and Anzhe the smoking piece of paper, trade looks. Tadej’s the only one of the two that finds words for the situation: “Aw, shit.”

***

Here comes the day when the lights shall go out.