Free The Convulsion Factory by Brian Hodge

whack on would do no one any good. He’d get along better on his own, never prone to crumbling into tears and begging strangers to listen to his woes. Let the drinks settle inside, then, and glaze him over with silent brooding.
    The French Quarter, and Rue Bourbon. Strip shows and jazz bands and karaoke. He watched from the shadows while slow numbness crept in, absently scratching his chest, fighting that persistent itch. It took deliberate effort to stop and realize just how long he’d been at it — enough to make it second nature.
    He rubbed again, probing with tender fingers.
    Swelling. There was swelling going on under his shirt.
    Gary rose to tread the churning sea into a bathroom that may have last been clean back when Louis Armstrong played. He stood before the cracked mirror and parted his shirt—
    —and stared at the two feminine nipples jutting from his chest. Protuberant and erect, their areolae as large as silver dollars.
    His reflection, staring. Cracked in the middle, two jagged halves misaligned at their juncture.
    “She was contagious,” he muttered in cold shock.
    And quickly reconsidered this afternoon’s lie.

    *

    Through a spitting rain, he found it an hour later, twice stopping street locals to point him in the proper direction. The Fringe had been built in a renovated warehouse downriver from the French Quarter. Night seemed deeper here, the air ancient. Few would ever come here by mistake.
    Although Lana had spoken of the Fringe several times, he’d never accompanied her here. He supposed that she alone had been enough to sate his curiosity about her kind, so until tonight he’d had no real need of this haven for gender-benders, and those who sought their company.
    Within its dark and hallowed walls Gary found a world of alternatives: music, clothing, anatomy. A maze of multiple levels in architecture, as Lana had described, each was dimly lit and an enclave unto itself. There was supposed to be some sort of garden atop the roof, where ephemeral couples might retreat for whatever liaisons their bodies, lacerated or not, would allow.
    Gary bought a bottle of wine at the main bar, weaved through the open center where dancers writhed beneath black light and strobes to music that sounded like the roar of an industrialized armageddon. The volume could peel skin.
    Here he was groped endlessly and let it happen, reeling with an intoxicated pleasure in so many sliding hands, so much sensory delight despite the known world of his own flesh turning strange on him. Here, at least, pretensions were few, the common denominator belonging to rhythm and movement and surrender. The real effort lay in pulling back, pushing on, remembering why he was here.
    He found them near the uppermost levels, Gabriel and Alexis and Megan tucked into a secluded booth. One noticed him, then all watched as he approached their table and slammed down the wine bottle.
    “Finally.” Gabriel looked pleased.
    “We’re mourning the way Lana would’ve wanted us to,” said Alexis, the blonde, tipping a highball toward a forest of bottles and glasses, hours’ worth of bereavement. “Sit, sit.”
    He glared down at them while fumbling with his shirt buttons.
    Megan perked up, brushed ringlets of hair from her face. “I so don’t want this asshole at our table.”
    “Megan,” chided Alexis. “Don’t be a bitch.”
    Gary sat beside Gabriel, tense as a coiled spring. He left his shirt unbuttoned but draped shut, feeling steam build inside.
    “After what he put Lana through?” Megan went on. “Whose side are you on? Lana was fragile.”
    Alexis reached across the table, intimately touching Gary’s arm. “Lana was like a … a goddess to our little family. She was the first to get the go-ahead for her final surgery.”
    Megan wiped her eyes, smearing mascara. “It should’ve been me. But no, my therapist says I’m not stable enough.” She gulped her drink in desperation. “He’s not satisfied with my reasons for the