It was peculiar to see the man run, because he was tall and the long black bag he carried in his right hand skipped just inches above the crumbling sidewalk and the weight of it gave him a limp.
The taxi man had seen runners in the Heights before, carrying their spoils with more urgency and awkwardness - televisions, armoires, stacks of hubcaps strung together like a day’s catch of fish - than the man with the black bag, but they were never dressed like this. He wore a full tuxedo with tails and a ruffled inset, and crimson petals of a handkerchief corsage spilled out of his breast pocket, shining in the mid-afternoon sun. The lanky runner reminded the taxi man of the key attendee at a funeral, the one in the box.
He pulled up beside him, dropping his foot from the gas and settling the old machine down to six or seven miles an hour. He leaned over and cranked the passenger window open. The air was still, but the cab’s muffler was perforated and it sounded like the running man was wearing tap-dancing shoes, so he took in a breath and expelled it with volume.
“You’re in a weird part of town to be wearing a suit like that, mister.”
The man looked around, saw him, and kept running. Then he slowed, nodding, brows arching above his nose. The taxi man stopped the car.
“Pop the trunk, please,” the running man said.
The taxi man pulled the lever under the steering wheel and opened his door, turning to step out.
“I have it, get back in. I don’t have time.” The runner dropped the bag into the trunk, and the hood slammed and latched. Then the man was in the seat behind him, running the sleeve of his suit over the ridges of his forehead, pulling away swaths of moisture. The sweat reappeared almost immediately.
“What you have in that bag?” the taxi man said.
“Nothing,” the runner said. He licked his lips. “ Honeymoon supplies. Wedding’s today.”
“Oh. Where’s the missus? You didn’t leave her over here, did you? It’d be even worse a bride running around the Heights.”
“My fiance is waiting for me at the chapel.” He cleared his throat.
“Night wedding, huh?”
“If you start driving, we might get there before the sun goes down. I need to be there by seven.”
“I’m on your end, man. What chapel?.”
“St. Francis, on Bonaventure.”
The taxi man nodded, and clicked the fare box on. He pulled the car into drive, and kicked it forward. He made the necessary turns, left and then right, before another left, until they were riding downtown. He shifted his attention back to the man in the backseat, who was fiddling with his wrist. The groom was pale enough, but his wrist was a purer white, and hairless. His mouth pulled up into a figure of mock pain.
“Have some business in that part of town?” the taxi man said, raising an eyebrow into the rear view mirror. The man’s head came up, met his reflected gaze, and quickly turned to the window.
“Not really.”
“Pleasure then? Did you leave your best man in a bind, if you know what I mean?”
The man in the suit offered a rude grunt and adjusted his bow tie.
“I did a double-take, seeing you jogging up the sidewalk. Thought to myself, there’s a guy who looks like he needs to be somewhere else. Lucky for you I showed up. Don’t you know about the Heights?”
“Lost my car, I guess.” His voice raised this time, cracking in two on the last word, a broken egg of annoyance.
“Lost it? Trade it in for that suit maybe?”
The groom cleared his throat. He unbuckled himself, tugged on his suit pants, and buckled in again. “Look, I don’t want to be rude, but please just focus on the road. I get that you’re trying to be friendly, but I’m trying to think.”
“Got it.”
The taxi man merged onto Bonaventure, about eight blocks from the old Catholic Church, St. Francis de Sales, a blocky spire that was much larger than it seemed from the street. The taxi man figured it was God who put all the extra space inside it, who gave him that colorful vertiginous awe.
They came to a red light. The fare box said 22.40. He could see the church, rising above the strip mall that sprawled across the next two blocks. He looked back at the man. The groom was looking at the church, and dark red splotches had appeared on his cheeks and nose.
“You nervous?”
“No.”
“You want some water?”
“Stop talking and get me there. You’ll get your tip, all right?”
The tiny hairs on the back of the taxi man’s neck went erect, and he bit both of his lips.
“Not the tip I’m worried about. You got a place for a wallet in that tux?”
The groom in the rear-view mirror looked down at himself, then patted his breast pocket.
“Even if I did stiff you, the stuff in the trunk would make up for it.”
“I wouldn’t want honeymoon supplies.”
“Maybe not.”
The light turned green and the taxi man accelerated for a hundred meters and decelerated for a hundred meters. The church rose above them, God’s shadow blanketing the cab. The man opened his door, and stepped out. He came to the window, holding a twenty and a five. The taxi man took the bills, still biting both of his lips. The groom pulled another twenty.
“You’ll sit here while I’m inside, wait for us to come out?”
“For twenty? I could get three fares in the time you’re getting hitched.”
The groom smiled, flexing a web of unused muscles. His teeth were dry and white, like stones.
“You’ll sit here?”
The taxi man wanted to drive off. The bag was still in the trunk. But there had always been rude fares, and twenty bucks was probably more than he’d get running around, burning gas. He took the twenty.
The groom turned, and the taxi man leaned over and cranked up the window. He engaged the AC. He stuffed the money into his wallet. He bit the back of his knuckle so hard he bled.
Out of the car, the groom kicked his long legs toward the church, head down, meaning to push through the door and make an entrance. He scanned the stains on the sidewalk, and glanced down the street, where the shadow of the church ended and a homeless woman huddled beneath her bedroll in the sun. She was looking at him, and a key of recognition turned a lock in his head. He put his head back down and stepped forward twice, and then stopped. The woman was still looking at him.
He walked toward her.
A certainty dropped all the way through him, like a brick down a well. The woman was his fiance, just about double the age and a little worse for wear. Homelessness did that.
“What are you doing here,” the groom said.
“It’s my wedding day,” she said. “Our wedding day.”
He knelt down. He didn’t know what to say. His mouth opened, and it opened, and it opened again.
“You probably shouldn’t marry me, you know. I know what happens,” she said.
He closed his eyes. He looked, and she was still his fiance.
“You know how much I love you?” he said. It was all he could say.
“It only makes you crazy, the love. On our honeymoon, when I find the hotel manager and you find the both of us, you kill him. You kill everyone in the hotel. I’m in a coma and you’re in prison and that’s married life.”
He imagined it. The groom wanted to say it wasn’t true, that he wasn’t capable. But the bag in the cab knew better. His fiance knew better.
“We’ll go somewhere else. A different honeymoon.”
“I’ll find anyone, anyone at all who isn’t you. Because that’s the thing of it all. You love me so much you won’t let yourself imagine that I don’t love you.”
The groom stood up. The blood inside him came to a point behind his eyes, tightened the veins around his skull.
“She loves me. You, I don’t know what you are.”
“We don’t love you.” The woman under the bedroll shucked it off and stood up. All of the groom’s muscles were clenched, and so he was smiling. The woman rocked forward on toes. She put moving lips to his ear, and breathed words.
In the cab, the taxi man was watching, annoyed. Why had he been in such a hurry to get here if he was only going to spend his time talking to homeless people? If that’s what he wanted, he could have stayed in the Heights. There were enough of them there. The woman stood now, leaning in.
The taxi man looked away. He watched the traffic on Bonaventure, the way it went like water, the people in their cars like droplets, oblivious of everything but a destination.
The groom knocked at the passenger window.
“Pop the trunk,” he said.
The taxi man pulled the lever under the steering wheel. The trunk popped open. The groom pulled his heavy bag out and made for the church.
“Do you want me to stay here?” the taxi man yelled, but the window was still up. The groom disappeared into the dark of the church door.
The taxi man looked around, waiting for the traffic to open so he could pull into it, another droplet joining the flow. It was unrelenting, and he idled. He saw the woman again, the homeless woman, and as she stepped into the shadow of God’s house, her face twisted.
He knew her. She’d lived in the apartment next door, in the Heights. His childhood love. She’d taken a drive-by bullet, and that had been all. He hadn’t cried at the funeral, only later that night, when he knew he’d never be happy again.
He watched her now. Inside of him, his heart opened up. His throat choked tears from his eyes.
Gunfire came from somewhere, a hitching rat-a-tat that shook everything. The taxi man threw his hands over his ears. Now there were screams. Oh God. Oh God why are you killing us.
His dead love turned her head and met his eyes and smiled.
The girl rolled her pencil back and forth on the desk, tracing circles in the air with her tongue. Her eyes flicked to the professor (was he watching?) and then back. She winked, and waited.
Eric did nothing.
Across the KEVA, the girl lifted a nostril and crossed her legs, returning her attention to the lecture. Eric went back to thinking about what was happening to him.
It had started about an hour ago, a paralyzing ache in his blood. He could move, but it almost hurt. Other things too. At the base of his skull, a pinch. A cramp in his middle toe on each foot. And he could smell blood.
He considered some possibilities.
My brain is coming out my nose.
Or: This is what an aneurysm feels like.
Or: I'm having a stroke.
And then: I should be taking notes.
The professor was clicking through a slideshow. He said things too, but students wore headphones or talked to each other, however dutifully copying down the slides, note-taking by rote. Eric didn't do this. Eric sat staring across the KEVA at a girl in tight pink sweats, flip-flops, and a white tanktop because it was easier than trying to look anywhere else.
After an hour of noticing him, she would roll the pencil, and make the tongue circles, and he would do nothing.
He sort of wanted to do something, he guessed. The sweatpants weren't a dealbreaker, and the girl wasn't ugly. His girlfriend was still in high school, and he'd been hearing around that she'd kissed a few guys at a bonfire, but he hadn't talked to her about it yet. He was going to bring it up the last they talked but she had to get off the phone, her brother wanted to call the radio station.
He could still smell blood. Only he wasn't sure it was his brain anymore. It seemed more distant. The girl sitting next to him pulled a tampon out of her clutch and got up to go to the bathroom, and he got a full whiff.
Jesus Christ.
Unconsciously he licked his lips. The girl across the KEVA was watching him out of the corner of her eye and this movement got her attention again. Girls didn't make sense.
Only, somewhere in his mind it made perfect sense.
His middle toes clenched, and he gritted his teeth. The girl, taking his pained expression as an declaration of lust, started moving the pencil again, this time stroking her finger from eraser to graphite. Eric wanted to laugh, needed to, but inside him was a clangor that might have come from God himself, if God himself were around to instill it.
He thought about his phone, in his pocket. He could pull it out, maybe. Call an ambulance. But each step of that process felt removed from him, absent.
Marty Myer sat chewing his lower lip. He was alone in what was probably the only waiting room orbiting the Earth, but nothing about this felt unique. His butt was crammed into a plastic chair bolted to the floor and he was staring at a door that hadn't opened yet. Behind it was, presumably, a doctor - one of the ones LevelCorp kept on retainer to deal with on-site accidents and other problems. It had been, what? Ten minutes since he'd signed in? What were they paying the guy for anyway, if he wasn't ready to deal with the one patient he'd probably had all week? He waited a minute more, tapping his fingers impatiently against the synthetic material, and then the door opened. Two men walked out, one with an arm-sling and a bruise traveling up the side of his face that made it look like he'd been hit with a big metal door. Probably fell, Martin thought. The other man was clearly the doctor, and he looked like it. Small, with some pudge and an amiable face. Fifty or so.
"Get some rest, the injection should clear up the break within a week or so. Tell your project manager to contact me if he has any questions." The man with the sling nodded and winked at Martin before leaving. So much for me being the only patient in a week, he thought. Must be busier around here than I thought. He leaned forward in his chair and waited for the doctor to address him - the other man was flipping through some sheets of paper and his body language made it clear that he wasn't ready to be bothered. Marty waited.
"Martin Myer? That is you, isn't it? I don't see anyone else." The doctor gave a wry smile.
"Yes." Marty stood up slowly. The doctor walked through the door and motioned for him to follow.
"I'm Dr. Riesler. And you're here because?"
"My project manager. Sent me. Something happened and I need a doctor's note to prove that I can still do this job, or I'm going to be released." He tried to keep his tone casual, but he could hear the anxiety trickling out. He was more nervous than he was willing to admit to himself.
They walked through another door, into a smaller room. Reisler motioned for Marty to sit, and he did, though he was a bit disappointed to see that not much had changed since his last visit to the doctor. A long roll of semi-opaque paper spread out over a table covered in padded vinyl. Everything else was stainless steel. The doctor sat in a chair near the door, leaning forward with his knees apart, the chart resting evenly across them. His eyes were squinty, like he'd been a habitual wearer of glasses at one time during his life, and Marty thought he'd probably had his vision problem resolved. The habit, however, couldn't be fixed with any medical procedure. Marty realized the doctor was waiting for him to continue.
"I guess my problem is a memory problem? I don't know. Lost time, I guess. I don't know for sure that there is a problem, because this hasn't happened to me before. I'm pretty sure of that. But my boss wants me out here to see you. So."
"Tell me what happened." The doctor's tone was friendly, and he had a pen ready.
"Okay, sure. See, I was out on the elevator. Reconstruction, replacing panels."
#
He'd been outside. In a suit, hanging suspended in space above the blue planet, plasma welding a panel in place. It was a big job, important. The elevator was one of the bigger things he'd ever been involved in building, materials-wise. It came from the ground up, fifty miles, and big enough in diameter for two cargo-boxes to fit end to end. It was big enough, then, to bring up any of the building materials for the space station or for any of the other things built in orbit - other space stations, craft-carriers and varied forms of spacecraft, from Transit to Transport classes (Transport was the largest of them all - the kind Alison was on). Anything that was too massive to lift into space all at once. The elevator was the most important construction tool there was. There was only one, due to the massive amounts of material that had to be used to create it, and when it was shut down because some dead satellite from last century ran into it, among other types of space debris, repairing it became a type one priority job. A job LevelCorp only gave to the workers it trusted the most, who had experience. Like Marty. It was how he found himself hanging off of it, looking down every so often to make sure he still wasn't falling to his death, welding.
"I'm done over here, Martin," one of his colleagues chirped, sound muffling in the space between the helmet's speaker and his head.
"With all three panels?"
"Yeah."
Marty frowned. Three panels, in what? Ten minutes? It should take at least that long for just one of them. Martin himself had five panels left, and the one in front of him was only the first.
"You have help? Stevens come and donate his weld?"
Silence. Then,"No...Martin, thirty-five minutes is plenty for three welds. How many are you at?"
"Thirty-five minutes, Todd? Are you trying to bullshit me? Some kind of joke, right? It's been ten minutes since we docked."
More silence. Martin shook his head. "Computer, tell me the time."
"Thirteen-hundred forty. Suspension at thirty-seven minutes and oxygen tank at forty percent."
Thirty-seven minutes. That wasn't right. Couldn't be. He'd only been here ten minutes, he was sure of it.
"I'm coming 'round with the dock to get you, Martin," Todd said. "Over, out."
"Wait - I'm not even." He bit his lip, and let the rest of the sentence out subaudibly. "I'm not even done with my first panel."
#
The doctor nodded into his chart. He hadn't been scribbling furiously as Marty expected, but simply making small notes now and again. Now he went back to glance at the front page, which was the medical history Marty had filled out on his way in. The doctor frowned.
"Martin, is this your correct birthdate? April 14th...2012? The one isn't a four, is it, and you meant 2042?"
Marty cleared his throat. "No, no. That's right. 2012. I'm...I've been around a while."
"That would make you...what, seventy-four? But you look like a man in his mid-forties. Very strange. Unless..."
Marty nodded, waving a hand. "It's all there in the files, or it should be. I was one of the first to undergo the nano-cell treatments twenty-five years ago. Back, you know. When it was still experimental."
"Nano-cell treatments. Hmm." The doctor raised an eyebrow. "That does change things. And I apologize - I was about ready to offer you a lollipop."
Martin smiled politely. "You're probably going to want to do some tests."
The man in front of him chewed the end of his pen. "Normally in situations such as yours, where it seems as if a patient has had a singular experience of memory loss or trauma-induced amnesia, I do a set of preliminary scans and send the patient to a psychiatrist. However, there are no psychiatrists in orbit with us, at least not in this space station. And your situation could be unique. It's possible the nano-cell treatments...listen, Mr. Myer. I'm not going to lie to you. Nano-cell treatment has been an interest of mine for a long time. In just the last year or so, several reports have surfaced regarding strange behavior in the beta wave of nano-cell recipients - like yourself. However, I don't want to alarm you. It's completely possible this symptom has nothing to do with anything extracurricular. Might have just been a hiccup in your consciousness, a simple consequence of being the age you are. I'm sure that's common enough."
"But you don't think so."
The doctor spread his hands. "It doesn't matter what I think. No use trying to guess anyway, and you were right the first time. I'm going to want to do some tests."
Marty considered. "What you said, about the others. What kind of strange behavior?"
The doctor looked away. "Seizures, fits. Nothing too serious." He took half a breath and stood up, suddenly grinning. "Let's get you into the lab, why don't we?"
****
Martin wasn't the type to have trouble sleeping. Not anymore. He had, in his early twenties, been plagued by a type of rampant insomnia, and what he called "itchy legs." In that case, not only could he not sleep, but he felt compelled to get up and walk the streets. Chicago first, then, after the summer of his twenty-fifth year, Minneapolis. Jogging and running were also regularities; it all just depended on how itchy his legs were that particular night. Sometimes he worked himself into a full lather, and when he crawled into bed as the sun came up he was lucky if he could pass out from fatigue. He always woke up sore an hour or two later, but his legs were satisfied. He told his father about the itches, but he only ever got chided. "You're not working hard enough. You spend all day working construction, you should fall into bed at night. You must be taking it easy." Of course, Marty knew he worked as hard as any other at the job site - it was his life. Keeping busy kept his mind on managable things. But at night, alone - that was when he thought of Alison.
Aboard the Jamestown, bunked up with all the other LevelCorp workers, he slept like an old man most nights. Instead of laying and staring at the ceiling and thinking about her, he dreamed Alison instead. Sometimes he was able to forget in the morning. Sometimes he wasn't, and those times were like working with a ghost tugging at his sleeve. Every few years he would check up on her, typing her name into the Starlines database and tracking her progress. The last time he'd checked, her ship, the New Amsterdam, was still nine lightyears out from Colony Alpha, moving at a relativistic speed. She was still only twenty-two years old. Just a girl.
Tonight, he didn't sleep like an old man. There was something wrong with his head. He'd be reassigned, he could see that clear enough. Even if they couldn't find anything wrong with him, he'd had a mental lapse while working on the elevator. They couldn't risk that again - his project manager, Larry Berensen had made it very clear that his mishap had cost LevelCorp plenty of money. They'd had to call in a specialist to finish what Marty hadn't, and wasted precious time getting the permits for him to go outside. "We pay you to do the job right the first time, Martin. I understand this is an isolated incident, and you're a valued employee here, so I'm not going to take any disciplinary action. I believe you when you say you don't know what happened. We have to cover ourselves, though. I've made you an appointment with the physician we have on retainer - go and see him. I'll discuss the details with you tomorrow." Martin had hung his head like a scolded kid in grade school, and nodded. "I'll do that. Sorry I've been so much trouble, Larry."
The man patted him on the back as he left.
"Only today, Marty. You're one of my hardest workers. Only reason you were put on the elevator."
"Yeah. Thank you."
He rolled over onto his side. He had no idea why, after seventy-four years, he still couldn't figure out the ideal sleep position. Sometimes he woke up real comfortable, and tried to remember that position, but when he tried it at night it was like doing some bastardized stepchild of yoga. The anxiety that used to come with not falling asleep stayed away, and he did what he'd taught himself to do all those years ago. He waited, and hoped that his mind would eventually get bored enough to turn itself off. Only it didn't happen that way.
He was nineteen again. Driving to the other side of the state to see her, one weekend during his second year at Chicago State. Spring, 2030. He made the last turn onto a dirt road, squeezing the steering wheel in rhythmic pulses. He pulled up to a small white ranch home with the number she'd given him, and tried to stop swallowing. There would be no turning back. He turned into her driveway, parked, and called her. "I'm here." Her voice on the other end sounded disbelieving. "No you're not. This whole thing was a joke, and you've just been pulling my leg. You're not actually coming." He smiled. "Look outside." He pulled the lock-pin on the door and popped it open. Then he propped himself against the door to make himself look impressive. It didn't last. The door of the house opened and there she was. Wearing a sweatshirt and a pair of dirty jeans, but beautiful all the same. She squealed. His legs were jelly. Then she was in his arms, and everything was all right again. "I was sure it was all fake. All a dream. But you came." He kissed her, crying, because even though it was real, his mind knew better. He'd done this before. So many times before. It was a dream. She was gone - had been gone for fifty-five years. "Don't leave me, Alison. Don't get on that ship." She was no longer in his arms. "I'm sorry," she said. "I love you, but I'm sorry. I miss you."
He came awake all at once, in such synchrony that his body refused to believe it had been sleeping at all, but his brain knew better. The vibrating ring on his finger had woken him. Three minutes before seven-hundred hours. He would have to get ready for work. He pulled himself from the cot in his little habitat and got his uniform ready. Martin Myer, construction worker. He filled the toothbrusher with solution and put it in his mouth before stuffing himself into the shower compartment. In five minutes he was out again. He checked his screen. Two messages. Larry Berenson and Dr. Riesler. He played Berenson's.
"Listen, Marty. I've just spoken to the doctor, and he says...well, it's just not going to be possible to keep you on here at LevelCorp. You'll be getting a letter from one of our lawyers in about a week, explaining what rights you have and what you can do about it. But this isn't my call. Based on the tests, its' just going to be impossible to keep you here. Too much of a liability. You could be a danger to...well, as of this morning your employment with LevelCorp has been terminated. I'm sorry."
Marty stood stunned. It was the first time he'd felt like this in...well, in fifty-five years. His fingers trembled, but still he touched the second message. Something was wrong with him, something probably very wrong with him, and he wanted to know what. Dread wasn't enough to keep him from putting it off.
"Hello, Mr. Myer. This is Doctor Riesler, as I'm sure you can probably tell. After going through your tests, I believe I have a diagnosis for your problem. This is where I'd normally give my diagnosis, but due to your special case and certain confidentiality by-laws I'm bound to, I can't. You'll have to come in, and maybe that's better. It might be easier showing than telling anyway, I imagine. Yes. I'm sorry for the news."
This time Marty was only confused. Sorry for the news? What news? That the doctor had a diagnosis? Riesler had left out some important key word that might have preceded that behemoth of a noun, "diagnosis." "Optimistic," would have been a good one. He would have been at ease with that. Bad enough to get him canned, but not bad enough to get him killed. "Strange," would have been more vague, but still better than nothing. His gut felt numb, and that meant whatever the word really was, it was only a subset of another word.
And that word was Bad.
He supposed he wasn't going to be needing his uniform. Martin Myer, ex-construction worker. He looked at it laying on his cot, his dark olive excuse for living, for staying around long enough to build whatever had to be built next. A symbol of himself. He looked at it just a moment longer, and then pulled on some jeans and a black shirt. He pulled a bag from under his cot and stuffed socks into it. Socks, underwear, the toothbrusher, some deodorant, and the other two outfits he owned. He didn't have much, not up here.
On the screen he pulled up the elevator's schedule. He booked himself a space on one of the passenger platforms, leaving at noon. Marty figured his life on the station was over. He'd go see what was wrong with him, find out if there was anything he could do about it, and then he'd go back home, to Michigan. Try and get a job somewhere. If he couldn't, if LevelCorp had put word out, he might have to make some friends as someone else. If that didn't work, well. He'd figure something out.
"How hard can it be?" Marty stepped out of his room with his bag, feeling for the first time like the old man he was. He sighed, and set off down the hall. Behind him, the door to the room he'd spent seven years calling home swished closed.
The first time they'd met had been pure serendipity - what his father had always liked to call "dumb luck." He'd gone to his roommate's track meet at a rival school, to root him on from the bleachers. Long jump, hurdles, steeple chase. He'd noticed a girl, sitting two rows ahead of him, who was also cheering, and for the same person. "Go, Brian, jump! Get 'em! Run!" She had wonderful golden curls and gently tanned skin, and her voice was...well, it was nice. Marty, whose body seemed to be acting of its own volition, found himself standing and then moving toward the girl. He realized as he was a step away that he had no idea what he was going to say. He tried to turn around, go sit back down and hatch up a plan, but his body didn't let him. He tapped her on the shoulder, and she looked up. Her eyes were deep blue, her lips full. This girl, he thought, has something extra. Marty was fairly captivated.
She smiled at him politely, and it came to him that he hadn't said anything.
"Uh. Hi, I noticed you were cheering for Brian? He's who I'm here for too. My roommate."
Her face lit up.
"Oh, hi!" she stuck out a hand. "I'm Alison."
"Marty. Would you mind if I..." he motioned to her side. And she'd obliged. He sat beside her and they traded quips and jokes for the rest of the meet. She divulged that she was there for Brian - they were dating. She was a dancer, and they'd met at sports camp. When the meet ended, it seemed they both were unwilling to leave each other's company, but Brian came by and, seemingly pleased that they'd met without an introduction, told Marty he'd be taking Alison back, and left with her in tow. Marty was left alone with nothing but a hot feeling in his gut. He hadn't gotten any more than her first name. She lived far away. She was dating his roommate. She was perfect.
He drove home. When Brian came back the next day, he was angry. Marty asked him what was up, and Brian told him that Alison had been asking about him almost the entire time they'd been together. "What did you say to her, anyway? I mean, you're a nice guy, but. Girls like Alison, they don't go for guys like you." Marty hadn't taken offense, hadn't said anything except, "I wouldn't worry so much. When I talked to her all she wanted to talk about was you," and when that garnered no response, he left the dorm and took a walk. His heart was beating so hard he could barely hear anything else. And that hot gut feeling had come back. She liked him. She liked him. There was that nasty little issue of Brian, but that would have to be cleared up, he would figure that out later. Nothing could stand in his way now, because she liked him.
A day or so later, when things had been patched up with Brian, she'd contacted him on his omnidevice. He'd been sitting alone in his room, pulling up engineering articles and linking relevant parts into a paper he was working on when her face had popped up on screen, along with her name. Alison Stuttgart.
It was a matter of coincidence that Lester Battle turned forty-two the moment he saw the woman with the fish birthmark. A coincidence so slight that only the universe noticed. She was sliding past through a crowd, turned sideways and letting her drink lead the way, one bare shoulder passing close by his ear. He was seated, but had been engaged in the tiny dramas the bubbles in his gin were acting out for several minutes. Her shoulder passed his ear, close enough for him to feel it, whether it was the air being pushed into his eardrum or the latching and unlatching of tiny hairs that sprouted from each other's skin. His nervous system, bombarded with alcohol, would have been hard-pressed to explain which.
He lifted his head and saw the fish. It was a swordfish. The pure unfettered silhouette of the kind of animal he saw drawn on sides of cans at the market. Or was that tuna? No, he knew swordfish, he supposed. Wasn't that the big needle on the front? Maybe tuna was a type of swordfish. Before the thought had fully entered or left his head, the swordfish and the girl it was attached to was gone.
People and their tattoos. His mind staggered back to the glass of gin, and the bubbles. He imagined these, the ones coming off the single ice cube in clumps, were the boys who'd brought him here tonight. They'd figured out it was his birthday (who'd told them?), and dragged him off into a van against his meager complaints. He wanted to be fresh tomorrow, for the work. His mother wouldn't appreciate him stumbling home so late, (not that he lived with her...but she was his landlord and he knew she didn't approve of the kind of behavior that led to stumbling home late) and he didn't want to have a hangover. Mostly, and this was the complaint he kept to himself, it was because he didn't enjoy the company of others. Didn't like it, not even this time, when he'd been somewhat of a celebrated guest of the youngsters who worked in his office. He knew they were making fun of him, even if it was sort of a nice gesture. Take the old bastard out for his birthday, cheer him up. Get some liquor in him and some laughs out of him. Lester understood. They had simply mistaken anti-social for lonely, and acted accordingly.
It wasn't a tattoo, his brain said. No, not. He was thinking about the swordfish on the woman's shoulder again. What then, a stamp? No, not ink. Skin. Pigment. Birthmark. He nodded into his drink. He'd known a boy once when he was little who had a large birthmark on the back of his neck. Liked to say it looked like Poland, only it was clear he couldn't see it himself and had obviously never seen Poland on a map. What a wonderful coincidence, he thought, coming out and having a mark on you that looked just like something, exactly. What were the odds? Astronomical, probably.
Two of the boys came back just as he was wondering about the possibilities of genetically engineering a birthmark to appear in a certain shape, and pulled him out of his chair. He pulled his face into a slow frown.
"Lester Protestor!" one of them shouted. Bob and...what was this other one's name? Steve or Steigl. Definitely not Steigl, but Steve was wrong too. John. Maybe.
"Is it, are we going to leave? Is it time to go?"
"No, buddy, it's time to dance!"
"I don't think, I don't want to dance."
They pulled him to the center of the room, and that was where he stood, wobbling, as the thrum of the band (some squalling electric noise machine) beat its rhythm into him from all sides. Out of the rhythm came a parade of dancers, surrounding him, moving in circles around him as they lunged and bounced and rocked with the music. Lester stood there. He started to tap his foot, in rhythm, against the floor. A cheer went up, and though it might have been for anything, he knew it was for him. When normally he would have stopped out of embarassment, he was too intoxicated to be bothered with such a useless emotion. He kept tapping, and then began to clap his hands. It was a slow thing, but eventually he had become one of them, forgetting himself in the music and the motion of his body.
Lester danced.
Some time got lost, and then he was dancing with a beautiful woman. There were less people now, and the music no longer felt like pulsating vibrations that dictated when his heart would beat. It was quieter, warmer. And this woman, where had she come from? Lester didn't care. She smelled like the sea. They were shuffling, a slow dance of inebriation, but perhaps he was the only drunk one. He pulled back for a moment, coming to himself, and looked at her. She was beautiful, like he'd known. But he hadn't seen her. Her eyes and her hair were the deepest walnut, and her skin was a smooth olive. On her shoulder was something he recognized. The fish.
There was a part of his mind that knew there was nothing random about it. A swordfish, and nothing else - so perfectly rendered - one in a trillion, a quadrillion. Meaningless, because there were no probabilities when dealing with impossibility. Miracles.
"It's perfect."
She didn't say anything. Her body rolled into him, a wave against the rocky shore of his age.
He suddenly wished he wasn't so drunk. That he hadn't sat stewing in a glass of gin. How much nice would this have been sober? A part of him knew he wouldn't have gotten this far, wouldn't have taken the most earnest of advances as anything more than birthday flattery. Even then, maybe half as drunk he would have been able to comprehend the fish.
He clutched her, feeling as if she would disappear at any moment. Walk away with a clutch of her friends. But the music kept slowing, and they kept dancing. At some point he realized they were alone in the bar.
A barmaid yelled at them. "You two! Last call was twenty minutes ago. Dance in the streets!"
The woman with the olive skin and the walnut hair took his wrinkled clerk's hand and led him out the front door. Lester had no idea what would happen next. Whatever he might have been expecting, it wasn't what happened. A block away from the bar she pulled him into an alley and pulled her lips up to his. He dropped his face onto her with a clumsy open mouth. It was horrid and wet, but as Lester would think of it in the morning, it was the most amazing kiss he'd ever been a part of. He only hoped he hadn't embarassed himself. As long as they had danced, the kiss was just as brief. Then the woman was tucking a rolled wad of paper into his hand. He stuffed it into his pocket. The fish glowed a dark red in the night, and swam away. He was alone.
Lester tried to think of where he was in the city. He'd driven with the boys from the office, and they'd left. He wouldn't get home for hours if he tried to walk, and he didn't have any money for a cab. The office was only about two miles. His mother would throw fits, would call police, but he no longer cared.
Tonight, he felt like a grown man.
Bob, a younger clerk, found him dozing on the steps in the morning. He shook Lester by the shoulder.
"Oh man, what are you doing here? You were supposed to go home with that lady. We all thought you were going home with that lady!"
"I...don't feel good."
"Come on, I've got keys. Get in there and I won't tell anyone you spent the night on the stoop. But you gotta do some of my work. Deal?"
"How much?"
"Just like...half. Of my reports for the day."
Lester nodded. "Sure." He didn't especially care what the others would think, but not knowing about the end of his night would keep them from talking to him. He viewed the days on which they ignored him with heavy favor.
He took his seat and began to write the reports. At ten-thirty his phone rang. He ignored it, hoping whoever it was would leave a message. They didn't. It was his mother, or it was the police. His boss would have found him if he'd needed anything.
At noon he felt in his pockets for a pen and found the wad of paper. He unrolled it.
Ten-thirty, it said. Answer.
"Shit."
The phone rang again and this time he scrambled to pick it up.
"Hello?"
"Is this Lester Battle?" A man's voice. Gruff.
"It is."
"Have you gone missing?"
"No sir."
"I see. This is Major Newman at the Police. Could you, the next time you haven't gone missing, phone your mother? She's really rather a handful."
"Yes sir. I'm terribly sorry." But the Major had hung up.
No bones about it, Bobby Ray had the best job in the world. When he woke up in the morning he smiled, happy and excited to get back to work. It was a 9-5 job, nothing special, but it was the best thing to have happened to him in a long time. He had no family; he was married to his job. He begged to work late; he got there two hours early just to go over what had happened the day before.
Bobby Ray was a member of an elite group of geniuses from around the world who tried to solve the world’s problems – an ethnic think tank. But today, today was the big day. Today was the fulcrum of his career. He was to unveil his life’s work, his single contribution to make the world a better place. Bobby Ray was going to be famous.
Bobby Ray opened his eyes. The auditorium was filled with people, sitting expectantly, waiting.
There was a pause long enough that Bobby imagined that his invention had failed. “That’s preposterous!” one woman cried, breaking the tension, “There are lights in that man’s eyes!” And there were. 8 small, bright, and hopefully bright blue ones. Bobby closed his eyes to cease their confusion and outrage.
“Let me explain, before you pass judgment.” The crowd of geniuses quieted slowly, and were finally silent. Bobby continued, “Imagine if you could tell a person’s mood by basic color recognition. There would be no more misunderstandings. Imagine if you could always tell if someone was lying.”
“Impossible!” Another member cried. The crowd was riled up again. Bobby stood, eyes closed, awash in disbelief and rejection. Beads of sweat streamed down his forehead. With every cry of “Blasphemer!” and “Go back home!” Bobby felt as if he had been punched in the gut. His fists clenched and he couldn’t take it anymore.
“SHUT UP!!” His eyes burst open, a fiery red glow coming from them, eight spinning sources flashing rapidly. The crowd was, it seemed, instantly silent. This time though, instead of a will to understand, it was out of pure shock and fear.
“I have spent my life on this project,” Bobby seethed, “And I will NOT take no for an answer. I have come to be heard, and I WILL be heard!” The four lights in each eye started to spin faster. “You can see the connotations of my invention, you see it in use right now! How can you not envision a world where liars are taken in and done away with? Where politicians can no longer make false promises? Where lawyers would be out of a job? Where you would no longer have to guess what kind of mood a woman is in? CAN’T YOU SEE ITS PERFECTION?” The lights spun faster and faster until it seemed as if he just had two rings of perfect angry crimson coming from his eyes.
Someone raised his hand cautiously, as if reaching into a bee’s nest.
“Uh…Mr. Ray?” The man’s voice trembled. Bobby nodded.
“Yes, Councilor?”
“If your...invention is put on the market, how can you expect anyone in their right mind to choose to have it…. installed?” The short bald man put his hand down and receded once again into the angry mob. Bobby could see quite plainly in their eyes that they were scared, frustrated and anxious. Many of them shifted uncomfortably. Bobby cleared his throat, and a single white butterfly hatched itself from its chrysalis and flew, inevitably, straight into his stomach. Suddenly the idea of his being on a soapbox wasn’t so thrilling. The red in his eyes dimmed, the spirals spun slower.
“I suppose it would all have to be government issued. We would start with criminals and sex offenders, as a precaution.”
“But you want total implantation!” another member yelled. Bobby felt as if he had grown shorter, his former friends forming a wall towering over his meager existence.
“Ideally, yes. My idea would work best that way.” A number of different voices lended themselves to the spray of verbal abuse directed at Bobby Ray.
“Do you realize the mass infringement of people’s privacy you’re planning to commit?”
“Sounds like the Mark of the Beast to me. How does it feel to be the Antichrist?”
“How is this invention supposed to help the world? Exposing corruption is the sure path to war!”
Bobby swayed, suddenly dizzy. His eyes gave off a pale yellow light. “I’m merely a concerned citizen of our world, just like you! Please, please don’t hate me.” He fell to the ground on his knees and his stomach, ravaged and overtaken by wild, teething butterflies, gave up its contents on the stage floor. He struggled to speak.
“It…. wasn’t supposed to be…like this. All I wanted…was to be noticed….isn’t that what we all want?”
A waterfall of voices fell on him, but he moved behind it and ignored them. Then, a single voice, large and unchallenged, addressed itself.
“Animals smell fear, Mr. Ray. What happens when a pack of wolves, at first subdued by their prey’s vigor, begin to sense that it is afraid of them?” The waterfall’s sound changed and dull roar was expanded a thousand fold. The voice, strangely like his own, spoke again, taking up all of Bobby’s consciousness.
“Bring me his eyes, ladies and gentlemen. Just the eyes.”
Bobby was pushed back into the waterfall and drowned himself in it.
REWRITE:
Bobby Ray was about to become marginally famous. Fame was never something he’d hoped for, and now that it was coming he was apprehensive. All his life, he’d never really liked people, and people had a way of not liking him back. He equated the average American consumer to a cow, content to graze the mall and li
The waiting room vibrated with nervous energy. The chilly blank walls offered no comfort to the hopefuls, and the chairs were hard steel. A cherry office desk had been placed at the front of the room, guarding a rather metallic-looking door. Sitting on the desk a placard read “Christine Trumble,” and at the desk, looking scrupulously at her nails, was a thin, gaunt woman. Her hair was pure black, and her skin was unusually pale. The lips she pursed were painted crimson, and the eyes she used to study her nails with were a pasty green. This was most obviously Christine, the secretary.
She enjoyed her job very much; it provided all the benefits an aging single woman like herself needed; dental, health, and a wage of thirty-five sixty an hour. She’d been able to move into a larger apartment, and put thousands more into her high-yield account. And yet, for all the benefits, her job was very simple. She told the hopefuls when it was their turn to go in, and kept the others at bay until either it was their turn or they left.
The first week or so had been somewhat disorienting, but after that she’d taken to the job with an increased fervor. If a hopeful got up to ask where the bathroom was, she’d say quite simply, “There is no bathroom. You can wait until it is your turn, or you can leave.” Most often the questioner sat back down with an anxious look on his face, trying to judge how long he was going to be able to hold out.
Miss Trumble’s favorite, most stimulating job was calling the hopefuls into the back room. For the first few weeks she’d gotten a phone call from the man in the back room to tell her who it was, but she’d been at it so long now that she just knew. Her desk was clear, the phone tucked into the top drawer, (she no longer needed any physical tool to do her job) and every time she called one of them the nervous energy in the room would spike, producing a pleasant tingle at the base of her spine. She’d be admiring her nails one moment and the next, her head would be tilted back and her mouth would be open a disproportionate amount.
“Thomas Yuergens!” Her exclamation cut so quickly into the silence of the room that everyone jerked their head around to look, their eyes wide. Their fear washed over her immediately, the erotic tingle it produced arousing her.
Thomas, bewildered and embarrassed as if he had just been caught napping, pulled himself out of his metal seat and staggered up to the desk.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“It’s your turn to go in now, Mr. Yuergens.” Her voice was robotic, perfectly trained to say these exact words. But she looked forward to the next part, for it was pure improvisation.
“Me? Now?” Yuergens, cowboy hat hiding greasy brown hair, had his mouth half open in either disbelief or stupidity. Christine motioned him closer. He bent over.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“You won’t get the job,” she whispered.
“Ma’am?”
“You’re too stupid, Mr. Yuergens. I wouldn’t trust a man like you with a John Deere tractor.”
Yuergens straightened up as if he’d been pinched somewhere unpleasant.
“Well I -” he protested, but she interrupted him.
“You go right on in, then, sir. And good luck.”
The man whose name she’d called a moment before looked down at his feet. His whole body language had changed; he seemed half a foot shorter than before. He shuffled to the door and, with a deep breath, went through it.
The time the man in the back room spent with the applicants always differed. Sometimes it would be fifteen minutes between entries, sometimes only a couple. But over the months Christine had learned to guess how much time each hopeful would merit.
Yuergens lasted almost no time at all.
“George Harwood!”
When he leaned in close, she told him he was too fat. There’s no way he’d be given this job, not when fitness was one of the necessities. She looked into his eyes and could feel she’d done it. It was all just a psychological trick. Tell them they’re not good enough for some reason or another, and for just those ten minutes they’d believe it. They’d take that identity into the back room and it would destroy them.
“You’re too old,” she had said on many occasions.
“You have bad hygiene,” was a favorite.
“You’re not tall enough.”
“You’re too nice.”
All of these were meant to cast doubt. The hopefuls were here for a job; they’d waited a long time. And just before showtime, she’d psychologically sabotage them. The simple truth was that she just really didn’t want any of them to get the job.
Today was Christine Trumble’s last day.
There were only four people left; it was the first time she’d seen more than two of the seats empty. She hummed a tune of disquieting apathy, and the men in the chairs each ticked in their own nervous way. The tall black man in the chair closest to Christine stared directly at her, completely still except for the occasional upward curl of his lip that drove his expression into a snarl. Christine smiled back, enjoying the very idea that the man believed he was intimidating. Beyond his outer shell of calm, she could feel his confusion, his anger, and his fear. The stink of it peeled off of him in a way he’d obviously never known, since his brow kept seeming to ripple in upset confusion every time Christine’s smile grew wider. The man, when she’d call his name, would stand promptly, body showing no sign of the roiling aura surrounding it. He’d take three steps toward her and she’d beckon him closer, so that his ear hovered before her lips. And she’d whisper, and the giant man would wilt a little more, perhaps even visibly. He’d take his next three steps and open the door leading to the man and his interview, and he’d be gone. She’d save him for last; there were three others to attend to first.
“Riley Throggle!”
Some of them, like this Riley, a gangly sweaty man with horrible yellow teeth, would bring the ad with them. They’d enter the room, look around, perhaps notice the way the walls sucked all the color from the room, sucked all the color from everything and everyone but the woman behind the Christine Trumble placard, and take another peek at the little strip of paper. Some of them, like this Riley, would squint, and gulp. Would look toward the desk at the front of the room and would begin to speak, Adam’s apple working furiously to keep any actual noise from coming out.
“Is this...am I?” they, like this Riley, would ask, and Christine would nod.
“You’re here for the interview,” she’d say. “For the job.”
The man at the other end of the room would take another look at the tiny strip of paper in his hands, before shoving it into his pocket and choosing a seat. He’d most likely try to make eye contact with some of the other hopefuls, as had this Riley, and would most likely be completely unsuccessful in the endeavor.
A few of the men had taken their strips of paper directly to her, putting it in front of her green eyes and asking if they were in the right place. Christine had been intensely intrigued by the whole thing the first few times it had happened since all she ever saw was a blank strip of paper; no ink or writing on it at all, nothing there but some torn edges and a few greasy fingerprints. She’d often asked the men to read her what they saw on the paper, and the best they could ever do was give her a look as blank as the paper between their fingers. This little game had long since ceased to amuse her, and she’d taken to surprising the hopefuls with her knowledge of their names instead. Only a few of them, like the tall black man who still stared at her, would show no reaction to such a simple trick.
She ushered the other two in, confident that neither of them would get the job. Of them, the more suited was the petty thief named Gregor, and she could tell he lacked ambition and will just by glancing at the needle-scarred arms he hung lazily at his sides.
Finally it was just her and the black man, him staring quietly into her eyes, her smiling pleasantly at his occasional snarl. She could feel Gregor’s interview coming to an end, but thought she’d mess with the black man a little more before it was his turn. She smiled some more, wider than she’d ever bothered to try. How disquieting, he must be thinking. That woman looks insane. Insane. She giggled inwardly at the thought.
And at that moment, the last thing Christine was expecting was what happened. The man spoke.
There was no warning at all, no clearings of the throat or false beginnings; it was as if he’d already asked the question before his lips had even parted, and the force of it still vibrated throughout the room as he waited for Christine to process his words.
“Why do you want it?”
Christine’s smile wilted and her heart began to beat hot, pumping fire through her blood.
“Want what, Mr. Beasley?” Her voice was tiny compared to his; she blinked and tried again to smile, feeling something she hadn’t felt in so long.
“Why do you want my job? Why do you think you’ve already won, when the thing you feel you’re winning is nothing you can handle?” His voice was like a hammer on heated steel, a forge inside Christine’s head. The smile stayed on, but only out of habit. Inside, she was a roiling mass of nerves. Don’t answer him, don’t. His business is with the man in the back room, not with you. You don’t answer to him.
“He’ll see you now, Mr. Beasley. Good luck.”
The big black man didn’t move. Instead, he chuckled. “No, Miss Trumble. Your man’s no longer in. Good old Gregor was his last one for the day. Can’t you tell?” He pointed at the door leading to the back room, and Christine followed his finger. To a blank wall. The door was no longer there.
Keep calm, keep calm. You still have the upper hand, you felt his fear before, all this is just a facade. Accept it, and move on. No door, no problem.
“I suppose you’re right, Mr. Beasley.”
“Call me Bub. And you haven’t answered my question, Miss Trumble.”
“Call me Christy, Bub. I want the job because I’m more qualified than anyone I’ve put through the door here. I want the job because I deserve the job. It fits me. In my opinion, the boss made a mistake working his blank advertisement on just men. Men aren’t strong enough, patient enough, or smart enough for a job like this. And I’d have told him that, but I’ve never seen the guy.”
“So you know what the job is, then. You know why the men that go in to interview never step back into this room. You know what the job is, and you still want it.” The black man didn’t seem to believe that what he was suggesting was a possibility. Christine winked at him.
“Bub, I was born for this job.”
Bub Beasley rose to his feet and took three swift steps to Christine’s desk. He put forward an oversized hand, obviously meaning for Christine to shake it. She did. And he leaned over, putting his mouth directly adjacent to her left ear.
“You thought you had me beat, Christy. Because you sensed my fear. It’s best you know now, rather than find out on your own. Fear is essential in a job like this. A fearless ruler is a stupid ruler. And where you’ll be ruling, fear will be your friend. Understand?”
Christine nodded. The black man straightened up again.
“Congratulations, Miss Trumble. It’s yours. May the position be everything you hoped for and more.” He reached into the collar of his shirt and pulled a chain from his neck. On the chain hung a key. He held it out to her. Christine didn’t move.
“You. You’re him? You’re Satan?”
Bub took hold of one of the woman’s hands and dropped the key in, clasping her fingers around it. He spoke once more, and then he was gone.
“No. You are.”
“You got the stuff?”
It’s Saturday. She’s walking toward me, pudgy hands wrapped tight around two fabric handles of a duffle bag. She nods. Of course she has the stuff. The dusk light makes dancing shadow puppets under her nose, under her eyebrows. She speaks.
Yes, I say. I’m ready. It doesn’t have to be now, but now’s a good a time as any. What she really means is, “Do you want to go through with it, now that we’re here, and you can see what it is we plan to do?” The answer to that question is yes as well. Jail does not frighten me. Every day will be ordered perfectly, with every activity coming the same time each day. I know; I’ve done research. I’m actually thinking I’ll rather like it there.
She’s quite the chunk, my accomplice. Her parents are divorced, and her mother slips diet pills into her meals. I guess she’s nice, I’ve known her since the fourth grade and I’ve been to bed with her a few times. I don’t know why she’s here today, to do this thing, but I suspect she has her own reasons. They’re of no concern to me.
The bag she drops at my feet, then reaches inside her vest and pulls out two ski masks. She stuffs her head into one of them, frizzled hair coming out the eye holes. The other one she tosses to me. I unzip the bag and take inventory. Ten beer bottles filled with gasoline, many assorted strips of fabric, a crowbar, bolt cutters, and matches. It's all there, everything that matters the most right now. I close my eyes. I imagine how it'll smell when the computers' plastic compounds break down from the heat, acrid and sour like the smell of burning hair. I imagine the waves of glossy black the fire will paint the walls. I imagine the prison walls the same way, burned with graffiti, piss, and the fingerprints of all who moved through the system. And I smile.
I pull my ski mask on and we move to the door.
“You sure no one saw you getting all this?” She nods and says she gathered it gradually, adding only one thing at a time for over a week. The bag she’s kept under her bed.
“All right, Doris. That’s all right then.” I should be reassured but half of me wishes she had been careless. Half of me wishes she had laid her doings out for her mother to see. Half of me wishes I was in handcuffs right now, riding away in the back of a squad car.
The inside of the school is dark, and the lonely echoes of our footsteps make their way down the brick halls.
She’s pawing at me, speaking in hurried excited gasps. She digs three of the bottles out of the bag and starts down the hall toward the east wing, where the two largest computer labs are.
“Doris,” I call. She’s forgotten the fabric and the matches. You can’t make a proper molotov cocktail without them. She runs back laughing and takes the rest of the materials. Then she’s gone again, skipping down the hall and whistling the theme from “The Bridge over the River Kwai.” It’s funny, I’ve never seen her this happy.
I turn the other way and head west. At the end of this hall is the media center. Forty computers, a university caliber library, all encased in beautiful stained glass. I think, won’t they be surprised when they all file in tomorrow to see what I’ve created. Then I remember. There won’t be school tomorrow for anyone but the fire crew.
I’m not particularly attached to the beauty of it all, that really was her doing. She asked me and I agreed. I couldn’t think of any more useful way to spend my time. Then, once I’m in there, in prison, everything will make sense again. Rules and laws will be enforced. Time will be a comforting whip, throwing me into a harsh pattern that will finally let me sleep at night.
I empty two of the bottles on studying tables before I prop them up against the book racks. Everything will burn tonight.
Making the cocktails is an exercise in caution. No gasoline can spill over, onto the bottle or your hand because once lit, the fabric might brush against you and you might find yourself throwing a flaming bottle with a flaming hand. I ready three bottles, and set them on the ground in front of me. The fabric is pushed into the top of the bottle with a little knot at the bottle end to act as a plug and to keep the wick in while the molotov cocktail is in the air.
They’re assembled and ready for the matches.
Before I can pull them out of the bag, a roaring whoosh sounds from down the hall. I can hear her faded cackling from here. I look at my watch. We’ve been here ten minutes; it seems much longer.
It occurs to me that I’m not even here, that these aren’t my hands making these preparations. I don’t exist, and my actions are in vain. It’s an odd feeling. Then hands, my hands, are back in front of me, reaching.
The matches I pull from my bag are blue tips. Made especially for very damp areas. I like them because of the way the matchstick is pine, not some oily paper composite; I like the way the matches rattle in their box, the way they snap when you try to bend them. I enjoy the way they grind against the little sandpaper hexagons on the side of the box, and the way the flame just explodes out of nowhere to spend its short life eating and growing slightly larger.
I light one of the fuses. I pick up the bottle, and ready my arm. Then it’s in the air, spiraling like a flaming juggler’s pin before liquid fire splashes onto the two bookcases in the corner, instantly devouring history; more specifically the topics of slavery and the Civil War.
Suddenly I understand how someone becomes a pyromaniac. They see the fire, but it’s more. They see its life, its beauty, its power. They see a being that can only live by eating; a being that needs to be fed. And they feed it. I see the fire and its beauty. I see its power and yet I love it only because of what it means for me.
One other bottle goes to the mini-lab on one side of the library, where six computers are hooked up to a laser printer. I watch the screens of two monitors shatter outward, fire melting the shards of glass where they land. I watch the printer erupt with superheated ink before its body blackens and collapses into itself.
I watch an arm that I absently recognize as my own throw the last bottle under the tepee of tables and bookcases I’ve made in the center of the library. There is more burning, more blazing light to score my retinas, more dry heat to bake my skin. I watch the fire from a chair just inside the library doors.
She’s chugging down the hall; I can hear the clomping of her boots, and I know she’s come to get me.
She’s tugging on my arm, her eyes wide and excited. She wants me to come but I don’t get up.
“Doris,” I say. “I’m going to stay a while. Pull the alarm on your way out.”
Her eyes show confusion, then disbelief. The rest of her face, mercifully hidden by the ski mask, is most likely matching the expression. Disbelief turns to understanding, to anger. She turns, and her boots are clomping against the ground again. Soon the sound fades, and is replaced just as quickly with slow, whining pulses. The alarm.
I check my watch. I’ve been here twenty-three minutes.
Any time now, I think. They’ll be here.
It was the tree house that I thought of most often. The pine-board platform built into the canopy of the tree that was higher than most people could chuck a baseball. The tree was a strong old oak that must have been at least 200 years old, maybe older. We built that tree house, Jeremy and I. Board by board, one nail at a time until it was finished. The worst part was the climbing, but I’ll get to that. Let me start at the beginning.
I was 11 that summer, I’m pretty sure of it. Not quite old enough to know about sex, not too young so’s I didn’t know every swear there was; or at least it seemed. That summer, the summer of 1954, must have been the hottest I have ever experienced. I remember putting out water for the animals and have it be halfway to boiling before an hour had passed.
I was it that summer. The only child of my parents (that would change; my sister would be born a year later) I wasn’t exactly a bad kid; I did my chores mostly and didn’t mouth off to my parents much. My grades weren’t half-bad either. Jeremy changed all that by the end.
School had been out for two or three weeks and I had spent them the way every kid spends summer break. Sleeping in and doing absolutely nothing but what my parents required of me. I remember the first time I saw Jeremy; I was taking a little nap up in a tree in front of my house. Then I started hearing these little bursts of noise. PKOW PKOW! There was a small kid across the street diving out from behind bushes and shooting at imaginary enemies with his toy gun. He had a cowboy hat on, cowboy boots, a holster and two guns. One in his hand, one in his holster.
The first thing I remember about Jeremy was his intensity. He had a way about him, that kid. If he said something, you knew he meant it.
I had jumped down out of the tree, walked up behind him shyly and had asked if I could play. He gave me a once-over, tossed me a gun, and we were instant friends.
We hung around my house mostly, him throwing his weight around, me following him around. He was so…so free. He did what he wanted when he wanted, and I loved him for it. He was my hero.
The tree house was our summer project. We found the tree behind a local elementary school in the woods. It was a huge oak; bigger around than a monster truck tire and taller than anything I had seen before. The tree didn’t have very many limbs; it looked as if the branches had been cut off as it grew, leaving hundreds of little knobs sticking out of it. At almost the very top of the tree it branched out in many different directions, leaving (we hoped) some sort of flat space. I had no idea how we were going to do such a thing as climb it, but Jeremy had an idea.
“We’ll just have to find boards and nail them on as we get them until we make it to the top,” he had said.
We came every week with boards, nails, and ropes to bundle the boards with. The building went by extremely fast; the whole ladder part had taken maybe three weeks.
Jeremy that did the hammering, his free arm hugging the slippery bark of the tree and his feet spread apart on the lower step so that he could hammer while keeping his balance. He kept his balance most of the time, but every once in a while there would be wind gusts, and I could see the tree move, rocking Jeremy along with it. Usually when this happened he dropped the hammer right off, then hugged the other side of the tree so that the whole of his body was pressing tight against that tree, holding on for dear life. There were a few times that I thought he was going to fall, just slip off the board he was standing on and windmill, arms flapping wildly as his voice tried to find itself. A few times he almost did fall, too, but some miracle of his reflexes always allowed him to hang on.
Of course, Jeremy wasn’t the only one up in the tree. I usually stayed a few rungs below him, handing him up pieces of wood that were tied in a bundle and attached to my belt. I was extremely careful about the tree, and if ever I was standing stopped I always had my hands behind the sides of the board above me. Jeremy didn’t have that option since he was the one installing the board above him. There were two things that happened as you went higher in the tree. The trunk got skinnier, which was good (you could hold on easier), and the wind blew harder. Or at least it seemed so; the tree sure swayed a whole lot.
We got there that week; we climbed onto the top of it. There was a circle of branches that were about ten feet in diameter; it would be a circular platform with a hole where the ladder was once we were done. We were sitting there, Indian style on the top of the tree, basking in our accomplishment. That was when I first noticed that there was something wrong with Jeremy. He wasn’t smiling, and didn’t seem happy. He didn’t even flinch if there was a particularly powerful gust of wind. When I asked him what was wrong he just shrugged, and by the look he gave me I knew I couldn’t pry. It was private, and when he wanted to tell me, he would.
I was late for dinner that day, my parents had asked me where I had been and I just shrugged.
“Playing with Jeremy,” I told them. They’d nodded and told me not to let it happen again. I would try, of course, but it was inevitable. I was going to be late again.
Construction once again began on the tree house, Jeremy and I climbing up the tree with bundles of boards hanging off of our belts, trying hard not to fall. It was the climbing that was the worst, did I tell you that? It felt like Death had his icy hand around your heart, just waiting for you to make a mistake so that he could squeeze. Every time I had to climb it I did it slowly, so as to make sure I didn’t miss a step and fall, or misplace my hand and slip off. Jeremy, on the other hand, raced up the thing like the ground was the last place he wanted to be, hammering fiendishly above me on the platform. By the time I ever got there he would be done, waiting for me to come up. I was as slow as hammering as I was at climbing, and I rarely got through three boards before he was poking his head up over the edge again.
He never smiled so much anymore, but hadn’t told me what was the matter, why he was so depressed. That’s what I think it was. Depression. Usually you’d see inactivity and antisocial behavior during depression, but Jeremy wasn’t the usual kid. He manifested it through action, working his heart out and interacting with other people. He had been talking to people a lot more now, even if it was usually sarcastic. A doctor could have looked at him and seen anger, but I saw sadness. I saw a boy who wasn’t happy with his life, and needed change. He was working toward something, that boy was. I didn’t know it then and I’m not sure even he did, but he worked at it just the same, with the same vigor he approached all other things with.
It was on the day that we finished the platform that I saw him break. He had gone from an active, intense child to a more subdued, peaceful one. We were sitting up on the platform when he finally told me what had been bothering him. He started off slow, avoiding the subject, but then he got at it.
“Did I ever tell you what was wrong?” He asked, already knowing the answer. I said no just the same. I figured that if the boy was going to finally let it out that I was going to listen.
“It’s my family. They’re splitting up.” He paused, then struggled on. “No, more than just a split. They’re getting divorced.” His voice started cracking and I wondered whether I should put my hand on his shoulder. I didn’t. He continued, crack or no crack. “My dad was having an affair and the lady he was doing it with was married too. He doesn’t even like the lady.”
Jeremy started to sob.
That was when I did put my hand on his shoulder, and tried to comfort him.
“It’s not your fault,” I told him, “It’s just the way things go sometimes.” After a while he did stop crying, and wiped his eyes. I held him, and he seemed so tired, like dead weight in my arms. It had consumed him, you see, this problem about his parents. It fed off of him and released itself in the form of hard work. And now that it was released, Jeremy felt limp, lifeless. But to my surprise he struggled from my hold and stood up. The wind was blowing quite hard that day, and the evening was starting to set in. He swayed a few times and I told him to sit down, but he wouldn’t. His eyes had taken a fiery passionate look into them, and his lips trembled. He looked at me.
“Sometimes…sometimes I just want to die. Why would he do something like that to us, to my mother? And sometimes I think it may be my fault, though you tell me it isn’t. What sort of power could drive a man from his wife? I think that if only I had been a better…been a better son that nothing like this would have happened. And that makes me wish I had never been born. And the question I ask myself once I’m up here, I ask myself, “Would you be able to do it? How easy would it be to just jump, and leave all of this behind, leave you behind, and my parents and their filthy problems?” And the answer is, and you’re not going to like this, Chris. The answer is that it would be incredibly easy. So I think that’s what I’m going to do. Don’t try to stop me, Chris.”
I had never heard so much misguided wisdom in anyone, least of all a 12-year-old punk kid. The worst thing of all? I knew he was dead serious. The look in his eye was both wild and defeated, as if it was a beaten down old dog. He took a step toward the edge and I jumped up onto my feet and lunged at him. He saw my attempt at him and flung himself backwards, and over the edge of the treehouse.
“NO!” I screamed, and dove to the edge, looking over. I didn’t see him. I hadn’t heard him land, and I waited, my heartbeat throbbing in my head. That was when I heard him sobbing again I leaned over the edge a bit more, and saw him hanging by his shoelace on one of the sharp nubs of cut off branches. He had swung down into the tree and his head was bleeding.
“Oh God oh God oh God,” I chanted, breathlessly at first but then with more panic. Jeremy might die unless I helped him. I scurried over to the opening in the platform to the ladder and lowered myself through it. There he was, on the other side of the tree. I was going to have to make one big stretch to reach him. He was sobbing and moaning that God never let him alone, that he was never able to do what he wanted. Then, as I watched, his shoelace began to break.
I gasped, and it all happened at once. I swear, during the next three seconds my heart had stopped beating. That split-second of importance was so fast I don’t really much remember it. But what I do know is, I ended up with Jeremy’s ankle in my hand and by some great stretch of my body, one arm still held onto a wooden rung and my legs had slipped off of the boards I had been standing on. I dangled, and Jeremy dangled from my grip. I used all of my strength to pull one leg back onto the board closest to my feet, then I got the other one on. I don’t know how I did it, but when your body is pumping adrenaline like I’m sure mine must have been, you’d be surprised the things that can happen. I held onto Jeremy for what seemed like several hours, but must have been only about ten or fifteen minutes. I tried to get him to grab onto the tree-ladder, but he exhibited no motivation to do so. He kept telling me to drop him, to just let him die, but I couldn’t. I held on for as long as my body would let me, I’m telling you that. Another minute and I would have fallen also.
“Drop me, Chris. Just let go!” Jeremy ordered, and he seemed back to his old self.
“I…can’t” I said through gritted teeth and numb arms. Despite my resolve, the situation couldn’t be helped. He was falling before I knew I had let go. You know how in the movies when they show someone falling it’s so incredibly slow you’re surprised they aren’t going back up? All lies. Jeremy’s body made a soft WHUMP sound when he landed, and I don’t remember seeing him fall at all.
I was late for dinner again that night. I had trouble telling my parents what had happened because I didn’t allow myself to believe it had, even though I had been there. None of it seemed real, and it wasn’t until I saw him at visitation that it really started to sink in. It was an open casket, and his parents showed up. They were solemn, not really crying very much; it’s how I’d imagine Jeremy would be at his own funeral, sad but not willing to shed tears in front of strangers. I went up to them and told them that I was sorry, and that Jeremy had told me to tell them that he was sorry. He really hadn’t, but I knew it was what they wanted to hear. Plus, I didn’t think he would have too much of a problem with it.
I lived life as though I was Jeremy, did what I wanted when I wanted, and put up a shell around me that enabled no one to really get to know me for the wimp I was, but to know the shell that was Jeremy. My grades dropped, my work ethic suffered. I was no longer the good kid. That was left up to my sister (the one born when I was 12, remember?) I was lost in that shell, and it prevented me from doing anything that wasn’t expected of me. Ironic, isn’t it? That, for all of my freedom, I was prevented from doing what the Chris in me really wanted to do. I’m miserable now, 59 years old and still a bachelor. I’ll always be a bachelor; I know that. I can feel it. And sometimes, when I’m trying to sleep at night, my own thoughts attack me, and I feel anger. Anger at myself for letting my vision of Jeremy live his life through me, angry at Jeremy for making me let go, for making my life miserable. But mostly, I’m angry at the tree house. It brought out the worst in Jeremy, and it is my own personal belief that building it pushed him over the edge, pulled him out of reality. It was thinking of the tree house that made me discover the truth.
Underneath my anger, underneath my regret, was a sad little boy who lived someone else’s life.
Three voices carried up the dark mountainside from what looked to be a campfire. The listening figure braced himself up against the steep terrain and cocked his head to hear better.
”I heard he set the fire. You know, like with gasoline or something. My mom said it was burning way too fast for it to be just a normal fire.”
”But had she ever seen a house fire before? Or a building? Once the fire’s spread far enough, is burning hot enough, it doesn’t matter anymore what started it. It all burns at the same speed.”
A higher third voice: ”Well, I don’t think he started it.”
The first voice again: ”Then why did he leave? Why can’t they find him anywhere, but all of his things are still there and his car’s there and everything?”
“I don’t know. But my uncle-”
“Don’t get started on your uncle again. Everyone knows he makes up stories about stuff.”
“Not important stuff, Bobby. Not stuff about his job. He takes being a firefighter seriously.”
“Volunteer firefighter.”
“Yeah, so?”
Both boys were silenced by a slow and thoughtful voice. The voice of the second boy the man on the mountainside had heard - the one questioning the Bobby boy’s mother.
“I don’t think he did it either, really. It just doesn’t fit well. Nothing fits well.”
“How so?” said the Bobby boy.
“Well, the first thing you look for when a suspect in a crime is evidence. The second thing you want is motive, and the third thing you want is a personality that’s conducive to committing a crime like the one you’re trying to solve. Now, we don’t have any evidence, really, except common conjecture.”
“He was there though, someone saw him there. And then he ran.” The Bobby boy sounded indignant, desperate for his opinion to be accepted.
“Yeah, but you said my uncle was a liar,” said the young voice, “and now you’re saying that what he said about seeing Mr. Pepper is true just so your theory holds up.”
“I believe him now though. Okay?”
The slow voice started up again. “What we have is a witness, a credible witness, who is most likely telling the truth. Do we all agree? Good, now tell me, Steven, what your uncle said.”
“He said when he went in to help the lady that lived there, because she hadn’t come out and they thought maybe she was sleeping or something, he got stuck in the upstairs hallway. And he couldn’t get to her room, and he could feel the walls starting to collapse and he thought he was going to die.”
“And?”
“And then this old guy came running out of the lady’s room with her in his arms, and he saw my uncle on the hallway floor and somehow carried them both out of the house.”
“But that’s impossible!” the Bobby boy yelled. “Your uncle’s kind of fat, and there’s no way some old guy carried him and this lady who was probably dead weight anyway.”
“My uncle was dead weight too; he fainted right as Mr. Pepper got to him. He thought it was weird like everyone else, but I guess he just figured people do extraordinary things at scary times. Besides, my uncle’s not that fat - he’s been dieting.”
“All the same,” the not Bobby or Steven voice said, “we have an old man identified by Steven’s uncle as Mr. Pepper, Mrs. Johnston’s next door neighbor, at the fire, pulling people out. That’s not exactly compelling evidence that he was responsible for the fire.”
“Simon, everyone knows that guy’s crazy. He never left his house, not even to get his mail. Let his lawn grow wild, and yelled at the kids who walked on it. He doesn’t need a motive to do something crazy - and his personality works out! Why can’t you two just believe what everyone’s saying? That he went nuts and set Mrs. Johnston’s house on fire, and who knows why he decided to save her and Stevie’s uncle? If he was innocent, if he was just a hero, then why did he run away? Why can’t anyone find him?”
“What if he died in the fire?” Steven’s voice.
“Doesn’t check out,” Simon said. “The only things that died in the fire were two cats - the only two skeletons the firefighters found. Nothing big enough.”
“So where is he?”
The figure in the dark bent up on his elbows, and slid down the slope about a meter before coming to rest again. A rustle and a breaking of twigs had given up his position. But the boys below didn’t move beyond craning their necks around to squint into the dark.
“Maybe that’s him,” the Bobby boy said. “Maybe he’s watching, waiting to murder us too.”
“Will you shut up?” Steven now, with real anger and fear in his voice. “Mr. Pepper never murdered anyone and even if he really ran away he wouldn’t hide out here. He’d be halfway to Cincinatti by now.”
“Without a car?”
“Maybe he’s hitchiking.”
“Please, both of you,” Simon said. “Let me tell you what probably happened.”
The moment was pregnant with silence, and even the figure on the mountainside strained to hear.
“Mr. Pepper is a man with a private personality. He’s not the kind of person who enjoys solicitors or even regular visitors, which is why although you don’t often see him come out of his home, you never see anyone go in. Which says to me that he doesn’t care a whole lot for people, or for interacting with them. And yet when Mrs. Johnston’s home caught fire, and he noticed, he raced outside. Maybe he heard her screaming, or maybe he couldn’t satisfy himself that she wasn’t trapped. Still, he went in. By the time he’d searched the bottom floor and ran up to the second, Steven’s uncle had showed up. We know he went inside as well, and that he and his wife were laid out on the lawn alive. Firefighters found them like that.”
“Yeah? What are you getting at, Simon?”
“What I think happened is this: while Mr. Pepper was carrying Mrs. Johnston and Steven’s uncle down the stairs and out the side door, he was most likely burned. He wasn’t wearing a firefighting suit, and he wasn’t wrapped in a blanket like Mrs Johnston. And with the rate the house was burning at that point, it’s probably all right to assume the burns he did sustain were substantial. By the time the other firefighters showed up and found the two unconscious bodies on the lawn, Mr. Pepper was gone.”
“Yeah, yeah, that all makes sense. But why was he gone?”
“It all comes back, Bobby, to the kind of person Mr. Pepper is. He wouldn’t have enjoyed the care of a hospital or of the general public treating him like a hero. He wouldn’t have wanted to deal with all of the questions reporters would have asked him. If his wounds were critical, that wouldn’t have changed his mind. He’d most likely rather die alone up in these mountains than in a hospital somewhere. As it stands I figure he’s got mild to bad burns, and he’s up here or somewhere just minding his own business until he heals up.”
“You think he’ll come back?” Steven’s voice.
“I think that’s up to him. If he does, maybe I’ll ask him if I was right.”
As the silence again surrounded the campfire, the figure on the mountainside pushed himself back into a laying position and smiled. "Good one, kid," he whispered into the night.
From below he heard Bobby's muffled voice:“You take the fun out of everything, Simon.”
The leprechaun in Kyle’s kitchen wore a lavender tuxedo with black pinstripes. He’d been there an indeterminable amount of time, and it was almost time for him to leave.
The doorbell had rung, Kyle had run to answer, and when he finally blinked down at the little man only one thing word going through his mind. Leprechaun.
“You must be Gary. I called-”
“I know, kid. Let me in so we can start on this little problem of yours. They don’t pay me by the hour.” Gary spoke in a low, musical tone. He smiled, displaying all of his ivory teeth, most of them capped. Kyle didn’t like him. Still, he had called. The number had been on a crumpled silver business card in the pocket of his jeans. He had no idea how it had got there, but once he read the words he picked up the phone thoughtlessly and dialed. As he waited for someone on the other end to answer, the card shriveled up and was gone when Kyle turned to read it again. He didn’t remember whose business card it had been, or what had been written on it.
“Yeah, sure. Come in. Can I get you anything to drink?” Kyle left the door open and turned, headed toward the kitchen.
“Nope, don’t drink, thanks for offering.”
“All right. I’m going to get a Coke.” He left the Leprechaun man (Kyle struggled to think of him as anything else) in the living room and grabbed a can of soda from the fridge. He popped the tab, took a drink, and thought. He was going to walk back into the living room and Gary the Leprechaun-man was going to be gone. Kyle was going to walk into the living room, find it empty, and be relieved. It was this thought that solidified his confusion. He had let a stranger into his house, and yet he felt the same as if he had invited his neighbor in for a popsicle. Yet he would be relieved that the man had gone. As he took a second swig, a low musical voice rang in his ear, and Kyle choked down the rest of the Coke.
“Parents aren’t home?” Gary was standing behind him; arms crossed and capped teeth participating in an iniquitous grin. His eyes were questioning, and needlessly hard. But he knew. Kyle could tell from his stance, from his face that he already knew the answer to his own question. It was true, his parents had gone up north for the day skiing, and had left him at home with a list of chores they expected him to have done by the time they returned. He’d done them already, marking off each chore with an angry check, and wishing his parents were like Bobby McReedy’s down the street. He’d been over once, and Mrs. McReedy had treated him and Bobby like kings. And yet, Kyle’s parents regarded him with mild indifference, and sometimes even a sort of watered-down contempt. Kyle had heard the saying about a kid being his parent’s “favorite mistake,” and somehow even that was wrong. He would have been lucky to be considered a “moderate inconvenience.” But his parents were away, and now it was only he and the Leprechaun-man. Kyle shook his head.
“Good,” Gary uttered, and in a motion that was almost too fast to see, he reached into the pocket on the inside of his jacket and pulled out a briefcase. He flung it onto the kitchen table and clicked it open in the same lightning velocity.
“How…how did you…” For the second time that afternoon, Kyle’s brain stopped working.
(leprechaun yes oh leprechaun he really is)
“Never mind, boy. We have to get started or I’ll be late for my next appointment.” He held out a silvery brochure, which Kyle took absently from him.
The brochure in Kyle’s hand was as cold as steel, and likely colored. Words, printed in a scrawling, boisterous script, covered the front flap completely.
It read:
Mathieu Lite Printing and Publishing now in league with Bayberry Books, Inc. is proud to offer to anyone who finds themselves not happy with their current place in life the Chance of a Lifetime!
The last four words sprang off the page in golden splendor, sparkling with such promise that Kyle read them three more times before opening the brochure.
The inside had a duller, rusty color. A paragraph lay at the top of the first third, and he had finished reading it before deciding to begin.
Walter Sebastian of Clear Water Creek, Indiana, has already taken advantage of our wonderful offer. Read below, and see for yourself what wonders MLPP can do for you!
Walter closed his eyes for a moment, contemplating. Was this new message one of concern and love, or had Johanna stopped trusting him? The heels of his hands rested on the mighty cheeks of his robust, open face. He sighed deeply.
Walter was once just like you: unhappy, without hope or prospects. He had trouble meeting women, making friends, and he was his boss’s whipping boy. Walter chose to fictionalize himself as a sex god in a romance novel, and he hasn’t complained once.
The room fell away. Kyle no longer noticed the suspicious grin the leprechaun man wore. The rustic glamour of the brochure had thrown him into a fiction where only two beings existed. The brochure, and Kyle’s dreams. He devoured the next section.
Have you ever wanted to be a detective scouring the forest for clues? An invulnerable superhero capable of just about anything? Have you ever dreamed becoming an astronaut, archaeologist, or an alien abductee? Have you, like many other men, lusted after women that would never talk to you?
If you list yourself above or have ever had ANY sort of fantasy, we may just be able to help.
The question is inevitable: How?
Just leave that to us. Once you’ve signed on the dotted line and chosen your fiction, our specially trained technician will guide you through the quick, painless, publication process. Your book will be printed, packaged, and delivered to whomever you choose at no cost to you whatsoever.
Getting published has never been so easy!
How long had he waited for something like this? An offer that could take him away from this house, from his parents? And the things he could do! Kyle could only imagine what sort of adventurous role he would play. A battle-scarred dragon-slayer? A deep space fighter pilot? His tongue swelled, and drool prepared to fall from his open mouth. Kyle read on.
The publication process is safe, easy, and best of all, FREE!
But, be warned. Once you’ve chosen a fiction, you’re stuck with it. There’s no changing your mind once you’ve signed on the line. There are no refunds.
Below that, there was a dotted line marked ‘signature’. Kyle closed the pamphlet. He looked up at the Leprechaun, still standing by his kitchen table. Gary had a deep, pondering look about him. Kyle moved to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair. He sat for a long time, thinking. Finally, he reached for an ink pen.
“No no no, you can’t sign it with one of those. Here.” He was holding out a golden pen. “But first you’ll want to tell me your choice. I don’t know what I’d do if you signed and hadn’t made a decision.”
Kyle crouched down by the Leprechaun and whispered in his ear, at the same time wondering why he wasn’t just saying it out loud.
“By Job. I don’t think anyone’s ever asked for that before. You sure that’s what you want?” Kyle nodded. “Well alrighty then, go ahead and sign. Don’t mess up; that pen writes in molten gold. And remember, there are no refunds.”
When he opened the pamphlet again, everything had changed. The last flap’s words had been replaced with a rectangular box with one sentence. “You’ve chosen fine, so sign on the line,” it read. And so that’s what Kyle did.
The Leprechaun led him into the cupboard beneath the sink and that’s where he began the publishing process:
From Asked and Granted by Mathieu Lite page 332
When Kyle walked through the front door, his parents were waiting for him.
“Kyle,” His dad said, a crease forming on his forehead. “Kyle, you didn’t tell us where you were going. We were worried.”
His mother stood up, putting her knitting aside. “I don’t know what we’d do if we lost you. That’s why…” she glanced at her husband. “That’s why we’ve decided ground you for a few days.”
“Why?” Kyle asked, genuinely confused. “I was only gone ten minutes! I went down the street to the market to see if they had that new Stephen King book. You know, the one with the zombies?” His parents frowned.
“Honey,” his mother began, “I don’t think we want you reading that trash. Now go up to your room, we have to finish getting ready. We’re going out to dinner. And remember, no phone or computer while you’re grounded.” She put on a polite smile that Kyle thought phony. His father stepped forward.
“If you need to go to the bathroom you’d better go now, because as soon as you go in your room I’m going to lock the door.” He held up a small silver key. The sympathetic expression on his face was too much. Kyle took a step back.
“But I haven’t done anything wrong.” He looked around, silently wondering how quickly he could get through the door and escape. His father stepped forward again, eyes narrowed, arms positioned as if he was about to lunge for a wild turkey.
“It’s for your own good, Kyle. We love you.”
“Yes, we love you,” his mother pleaded. It was wrong. Everything was wrong. Both of his parents had the “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you make me” look in their eyes.
“Do you? Really? Then why are you locking me in a room for no reason? It’s like…” he paused, thinking. “It’s like someone’s paying you to act like you love me.” His parents glanced at each other guiltily, and Kyle used their moment of hesitation to sprint to the door. He wrenched it open and stumbled outside, awkwardly regaining speed. His mind was frantically shuffling through his mind, recalling awkward moments with his parents where something had been off, and now he knew what it was. They weren’t his parents. They were just hired to play his parents. It was like a movie or a play or a badly written novel. He was to the sidewalk now, to the road. He was going to make it. He was going to be-
EDITOR’S NOTE: There seems to be a publishing jam here, on page 335. Let it be known here that Mathieu Lite Publishing is not liable for the breach of contract by any publishee, because once the process begins it will continue in perpetuity until the company is satisfied.
Strong hands came down on his shoulder and Kyle was violently shoved aside, catching a mouthful of gravel as he wiped out in the road. His vision swam and his left cheek was hot. Hot and wet, not yet painful. Kyle didn’t need to touch his face to know that a significant amount of skin had been scraped off. He rolled over and saw the man he’d thought of as his father for all this time standing there, hands on his hips. But now he looked different. He was snarling, the look of a man who’s been pushed too far was ironed into his face. This new man spoke.
“Now, look what you made me do. Don’t try to run from me, Kyle. I love you too much. We love you too much. You know that, don’t you? Now, don’t you want to come in and get cleaned up?”
All the boy on the ground could do was nod. The man helped him up and minutes later Kyle was safely locked away in his room. And the two parent characters left the house for the last time, suitcases in hand.
“Richard?” The mother character asked.
“What?”
“That’s never happened before. I mean, he found out about us. He just seemed…so human.”
“Nonsense. All of the other characters in these novels have writers. It says so in our contracts.” His left eye began to twitch.
“Still, I wish we didn’t have to kill him. What if-“
“He wasn’t, okay? Jesus, woman. Maybe his writer just decided to get creative. Or he was getting fired and decided to pull one last big thing. That would explain it. And we had to kill him; it was in the outline. If we didn’t, they’d have to print a sequel, and the money for it would have been taken out of our paychecks. You know that as well as I do.”
The woman sighed. “I guess you’re right. Still, I wish we didn’t have to do it. He seemed so real.” Behind them, the house got further and further away, diminishing any chance that they had of hearing the boy’s screams.
THE END
My name is Gordon Brick, and I am a writer.
A writer is just what we call those of us who go around pretending we don’t matter while secretly believing the opposite: that nobody matters aside from us. Take myself, for instance. What incredible ego must I have to take it upon myself to create people and places that don’t already exist? Presumably, were these people meant to exist, they would. I am not doing the universe any kind of service.
But let’s say the worlds and characters I create exist in some other dimension. Were we to accept that an infinite number of parallel realities coincide directly with ours, then - wouldn’t we have to assume that in one of these there is a living breathing animal with the name of Bertumirtha Robinson? I just made her up, you see. Upon having imagined Bertumirtha, who is a sixteen-year-old girl (as well as every other age she could possibly be) I have hypothesized a universe where she exists. And if an infinite number of universes exist, then so must she. What if that one universe in which she exists is this very one?
Therefore, if you’ve been following this logic, I am God.
Understand - I label myself not this word in an effort to change your personal beliefs. Perhaps your God and myself are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps we can both exist at the same time - if not in this world then surely in another. Also, do not mistake me. I did not make you. Some other version of me in another universe has most obviously hypothesized a character with your name, effectively creating the need for your existence. Simply by typing a few sentences about your facial structure, demeanor, and the type of clothes you wear, they’ve ensured that somewhere, sometime, you exist. Lucky for you that time is now. The God you pray to only exists in another version of this reality - he or she can’t hear you. But I can.
Isn’t that what’s important - A God that listens?
Listen: While I typed those words, a message box opened up, and thinking I must know the person who messaged me, (because who besides people I know would bother?) I responded. In responding I found out that the name of the person on the other end of the message was Bertumirtha Robinson, a sixteen-year-old girl. When I asked her what universe she came from, she seemed to be confused. She said “Atlanta.”
Why has she messaged me? Bertumirtha says she has found my name on a list with a plethora of contact information. She’s been compelled to contact me. She does not know anything about me. I find all of this rather suspicious.
At first I wonder if I am simply the victim of a very clever prank, meant to strike fear into my blaspheming heart. I can imagine a person doing such a thing - thinking these very words as he portrays himself as a sixteen-year-old girl with a horrendous name I am responsible for: “He wants to play God, does he? Then we’ll let him play God. See how he likes it.” The idea being that playing God is not a very fun game.
I find myself agreeing with this prankster. What fun is it to be the creator of anything if all that thing wanted to do was find and bother you with its tiny problems?
So I ignore Bertumirtha at first.
Time passes. Etcetera.
Bertumirtha tells me she loves me. We have been talking for several months, and I have not yet told her that it is possible that I am her Creator. That she appeared to me moments after I hypothesized her existence. I tell her I love her too, because she is very pretty, and if I am her Creator I don’t want to be apathetic about it. I wonder if it is because she only says things I would have made her say. I have friends who would be interested in this relationship, because it all seems rather masturbatory.
Tomorrow I am traveling to Atlanta to meet with my creation. She says she will be wearing a red dress.
I am not sure what to wear. Behind my eyes, in the front part of my brain, there is a dull throb of surety. I will arrive, and she will not. She cannot, because she cannot exist. If she does, then I will be pleasant with her, and put my lips to hers. She is only sixteen because I made her that way - she is no girl.
What was it like when God came down from a mountain as a burning tumbleweed?
Was he nervous?
We meet at a church. The reason doesn’t matter - by now I’m convinced it is because a church is the optimal setting for a meeting between a character and its creator. I might have joked it was my house, but it’s a Greek Orthodox church, which I’m not even sure is a real thing. Walking through the doors and looking around, I am more and more convinced the place is made out of papier mache.
She looks how I imagined her. Same almond skin, deep brown eyes, soft lips. If I’m not her creator, someone else thought my thought before I ever did. She’s sitting in a pew, and some other people are too. Pews are a sort of really long bench, and these ones are heavily-glazed cherry. Maybe when the carpenter was putting on all those coats of lacquer, the place really stunk, and the really long benches got named. I slide in next to her, and it’s easy because I’m wearing a white fleece jogging outfit (accented with orange vertical bands) and I think I could slip down the whole length of one if I had a step or two to get up to speed.
“Bertumirtha,” I say. She looks at me like she knows me, because I sent her a picture. In the picture I’m jogging.
“You’re wearing that same outfit.”
“I thought I should wear something recognizable. Also, whenever I drive more than two hours I wear the fleece.” I don’t tell her why, because it’s not in her character to be interested in boring details like it’s how I keep the odors in.
“We’re in a church.”
“Good setting, right?”
“I’d rather go somewhere we can talk.” She looks at me and I can see she doesn’t mean talk. All of a sudden I realize a church is a terrible setting, and my fleece starts to itch. I lick my lips, wondering if I shaved.
“Let’s take a walk.”
In front of the Chorus Members Only room (which I misread as Chosen Members Only the first and second times) there is a velvet rope and a carved out cylinder of stone wherein two people can be safely hidden until the noises they make are heard by wandering men of God.
Bertumirtha and I are in this cylinder. She smells how I wrote that she did, like pomegranate and salt. She moves to kiss me and I wonder if I imagined that part of her, the mouth part, too big. Our teeth clank. Outside of our cylinder, a man says, “But who would steal anything? Inside a church?” The word church, given such emphasis, tickles me. Bertumirtha gets better accustomed to the unusual shape of my mouth, and I hear this: “Hard to imagine anyone doing anything like that inside a church.” I am still kissing her but now I am laughing too. This is a mistake. It’s in Bertumirtha’s character to respond to any sort of laughter with a raucous brand of her own, often ending in fits of snorting. She does so.
Moments later a man’s giant head pokes into the cylinder. It is like some deep sea creature. A jellyfish, or an octopus. Some of it is glowing. Its eyes (does it have eyes?) are dark and bulging, and veins all over it are standing out. I think it might pop.
“What are you doing in here,” it seethes. The head tries to get more of itself into the opening, but it’s too big. It pulls a foot-long stick from the robes it flies around in and waves it at us.
“Are you having sex?” It is in Bertumirtha’s character to respond to accusations regarding her coital status by widening her eyes and opening her mouth. It’s a stock expression of fear, and I’m a lazy writer. The way my face works itself up at the giant head is as if to say, “No, we’re not having sex you jolly fat idiot,” but my mouth doesn’t say this at all. My mouth says this:
“Not yet.”
The eyes bulge, the veins tighten.
“You’re in a church!” the head hollers. I giggle. Bertumirtha sobs. “You’re having sex in a church?” That word again, like it’s supposed to mean something extra when it’s said all sideways like that. Is a church ever more or less a church?
“Get out of my church right now! I’m going to call the police, and they’re going to-” He stabs his little stick at us, his magic wand of religion. I have never seen the owner of a church so angry, but perhaps that’s a commonality among such men, as I’ve only encountered the one.
“IN A CHURCH?”
I once wrote a story about a man who devoted his life to coming up with phrases that people would attribute to him after he died. Every night he would come home from work and put down in his journal something he’d thought of during the day. “A fool and a genius should each be paid - the genius for his thoughts, and the fool to keep out of them.” “Constant scrubbing doesn’t stop the child from walking through mud.” Little gems of wisdom like that. He made sure to say one or more of his favorites every time he was at a social gathering or work function - so they might catch on. They never did. One day, he rushed to the toilet in his office and just managed to sit down before the worst of runs came out of him. The noise was awful - the smell stripped paint. He put his head between his knees. “Oh Christ,” he said, “Better to shit down than sit up.” Someone started laughing - a coworker had been in the stall next door, listening to it all. My writer of sayings died soon after, as characters are wont to do, and what do you think I made his friends and family put on his tombstone?
Outside, in the grass, I tell this to Bertumirtha, and then explain that the thing we’ve just encountered will have a similar tombstone. This man’s epitaph would read, “IN A CHURCH?” She is still crying, not audibly, but in kind of wheezing gasps, the kind I am proud of because any writer can make a character’s eyes get red and have water come out. Then I start laughing, because she’ll have to, and soon she is laughing and gasping and wheezing and it’s all my fault.
“I have to go,” I say, pulling her head toward my head so they touch, our forehead greases mixing.
“I have a secret,” she says. “I created you.”
“What now?” This is certainly not in her character. Stealing my secret and saying it’s hers, because I didn’t create her to be rude.
“I imagined a writer,” she says, “Named Gordon Brick, for a story assignment at school. I made up a character sheet. Even drew him. A week later I typed the name into Google. You were real.”
I hadn’t written any characters to think they’d created me, because that wouldn’t make any sense. Bertumirtha has taken on a mind of her own. I scrunch up my eyes and make them as narrow as they get. This is how you look at people you were just kissing inside of a church but for certain reasons no longer trust.
“I wrote a story about your character from your point of view, and had him think himself God, had him imagine a random name, which was mine, had him immediately confronted with the possibility of his creation.”
“Oh. But. You’re sixteen.” There is something I am trying to get at here, a kind of proof of denial. Sixteen wasn’t enough years to imagine all of mine, all of my books. I’ve written hundreds of them.
“You’re forty, and yet nothing about the idea of making out with a sixteen-year-old girl in a church bothers you. I made you that way. You only remember having written books, not writing them. The story about the man of quotations I made up for my assignment as an allegory for you.”
“How’s that?” My head feels muzzy. I really should have left when I said I was. All the extra listening is making me nauseous.
“You’re a man who thinks he’s God, thinks he’s been given proof of that fact, only to find out that he’s less real than anyone else, and that a sixteen year old girl-”
“Uh huh.” I didn’t remember making her character this long-winded, but if she could be trusted (and I’d really stopped trusting her right after she’d gone out of character - maybe this wasn’t Bertumirtha at all, but a decoy) then I was a fabrication, not her. I giggle at the absurdity.
“-actually is God. Irony. Only it would be, if it were in your character to believe unbelievable things people you think you’ve made up say to you in person once you’ve met them.”
I’m turning to leave. I’m walking across the parking lot. I’m in my car. Bertumirtha is standing in the grass, no longer crying, no longer laughing. She has her hands on her hips. I roll down my window as I go by, and say this:
“What happened at the end of your story assignment?”
She says some nonsense, and I drive home.
Among relaxation connoisseurs bored with acupuncture, a good nose masseuse is a delicacy. But hardly anyone knew about it, so you the marketing had to be good.
Bertrand happened to be both a nose masseuse and very good at marketing.
He’d gotten his start at sleep-away camp his 10th grade summer, when one cold night a boy named Warwick woke up screaming, sinus golf ball behind his eyes and no way to force any air through his nostrils, in or out. Bertrand had sprung from his bunk and raced to the boy, flinging him out of bed and applying the base of his palm to the ridge just between and below the eyes.
Then he broke the boy’s nose.
Warwick had begun thanking him almost immediately, through the babbling blood from his busted vessels.
“I’m at peace, for a moment at least, Bertrand. You’re an angel.”
In the morning the boy had still had to go home and there were whispers of brain damage, but Bertrand was heartened. He’d acted spontaneously, decisively, produced a favorable outcome, and if he was lucky he’d find a university eager to develop his gift.
That university turned out to be Orel Roberts' School of Dentistry and Chiropractory, after the applications to Tufts and Columbia, two of the foremost in the healing arts left his applications unreturned, neither even bothering to pay postage for the small white envelopes bearing the single-sheet form rejection slip that seven other had universities sent. Bertrand wondered if his entrance essay had been too confident, or if his grade point average (2.7) was a point of contention for the admittance person. He wondered until the bright yellow packet from Orel Roberts came, and when he tore it open, thumb carefully separating the fused flap from the rest, the first line of the most conspicuous folded-up piece of paper did not say “We'd like to thank you for your interest in our university, however...”
At college Bertrand quickly grew bored in class and took to sleeping late, playing video games all day, then drinking until he’d pass out. Sometimes he went to class, and he always went to exams, but mostly college that first year took place in his dorm room. But he didn’t forget about his dream of being a nose masseuse. He had practiced his skills on his roommate, and on the groups of students who came over to smoke pot out of his roommate's hookah (wasteful but for the novelty of it).
“I'm not saying breaking noses is necessarily necessary – outside of extreme cases,” he said to them one night. “Not that I wouldn't break any of yours if you were suffering from the sort of discomfort my friend Warwick was.”
He said it with a chuckle, trying to put the boys at ease and the make the girls uneasy. He gave them all sinus realignments, telling them what to notice in their breathing from now on. “In the cold, you'll have no trouble. Won’t feel like it's freezing in your nostrils. And I dare any of you to come back and tell me you sneezed, because you won't be able too, because you'll be lying.”
They'd all been genuinely impressed.
The next week one of the kids texted him with a problem - a boy named Kevin was unable to get his nose to stop running. Bertrand got him to come over then put him in ankle shackles, hanging him upside down from the loft bed he slept in.
“What I’m going to do now,” Bertrand said, “is use suction to clear the fluid from your sinuses, and then I’m going to do a realignment so that you aren’t creating new mucus for a few hours.”
Kevin, hanging upside down, writhed an ok.
Bertrand turned on his vaccuum, and held the attachment wand in his right hand. On the end of it was half of an enema bulb that had been stretched over the tube’s opening. He alternated between nostrils, advising Kevin not to try to breathe through his nose until he said. Then he began sucking the boy’s snot.
“This is extremely unpleasant, isn’t it?”
Kevin squirmed yes. Bertrand explored with the enema tip, sucking more and more snot out of the boy’s face.
“This vaccum is pretty loud, but I think it’d be nice to turn some music on.” Bertrand paused what he was doing and rolled back to his computer screen, on which he loaded the Smashing Pumpkins.
“Okay I think we’ve got enough.of the mucus. Now we’re going to do a realignment. Let me pick a song that ”
So he wound up and kicked Kevin with a very specific amount of force, right in the face.
The boy screamed, and clutched his face and Bertrand let him hang there, crying and dangling until he looked up finally, an expression of anger and betrayal there.
“Now I will let you down and you’ll be able to breathe normally.”
He undid Kevin’s left footstrap. “Now make sure you can hold yourself up before I release the next one.” He undd the other strap and Kevin tipped forward into the room, landing in a crouch on his knees.
“It...you... It worked.”
“Yes. The methods of a nose masseuse are secret and not known buy very many; and the ones who know, even fewer of them choose to practice. Thank you for letting me get experience in this way, and I’m glad I could help you.”
“What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. Just tell all your friends. Parts of it may not be pleasant, like the kick in the face, but think of acupuncture it’s a lot of it the same principle. Not really nice to think about ,and maybe not nice while it’s happening, but it does the trick.”
“Thanks, dude. What was your name again? Bertram?”
“Bertrand. Nose masseuse.” He dug out of his desk a business card, one he’d gotten made up by a kid in the art school. It was a nose with pull tabs under each nostril. One pull tab had his name and what he was, and the other had his phone number and email address. The pull tabs looked like snot. He’d argued with the art kid about whether this was professional at all but the art kid had promised him it would do a lot for his marketing, which was all Bertrand had needed to hear.
“Take this, and call me in the morning.”
“Yes, if you need to, although you won’t need to. If you call I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”
“Uh..Okay. hanks. Weird card too, do you have some more?”
“Sure, take a few.” Bertrand gave him a stack.
“Okay. Later,” Kevin said, and left.
Bertrand did several fist pumps alone in his room, the chorus of a Smashing Pumpkins song guiding him along.
He did not graduate from Orel Roberts. He left with an associates degree one of the worst grade point averages the school had ever had.
Bertrand didn’t care. He had a network of students who came to him frequently, and a network of their parents, and a network of their parents’ bosses. All he needed now was to take this from a dorm room operation and turn it into an office3 operation. He needed a license.
And getting a massage license was not hard - he would just ahve to lie about the aspect of his business that would differ from any other. For instance, there would be no happy endings, but you might get a kick in the face.
He called his parlor the Olfactory Tune-Up, and that way he got people thinking it was about smells and music, but really it was an alternative medicine office, one he funded with venture capital from all of the rich bosses who thought he was magic, a wunderkind.
As the sun burned the early morning fog away, a crouching figure loped through the knee-high grass of a neglected lawn and came to rest on the bottom step of a rotting porch. Attached to it was a little white house with dark blue shutters and windows frosted with grime; a house much smaller and uglier than every other house on the street. Weathered rolls of peeled paint and moldy roof shingles littered the porch and the screen door hung out by its bottom hinge, wedged in place by a stack of soggy newspapers. Faded flyers covered the front window, from which several small circles of glass had been punched out.
The porch breathed with every gust of wind, a creaking wheeze that built harmoniously with the whimpers of the figure resting on its steps. Its torn pajama pants were faded and stained dark brown and red, and only reached halfway down its shins. A shrunken, once-pink sweatshirt fell about the thing’s shoulders, a smiling cartoon cat printed on the chest. It wore socks of mud and blood and grass, and its hair fell like greased rope to its midsection, decorated with bows of burrs and the skeletons of insects. Its eyes were squinted tight, wary of the sun, and covering its face was a crust of oily dirt. It was a girl, or had once been, before being left to grow up in the dark of some sick man’s dungeon, sibling to the mice and spiders that had kept her company. She was more it than she now, more animal than human; the only thing attaching her to this world a memory of a place, a beautiful happy place.
The hanging screen door clattered against the newspapers and the thing in little girls’ clothing whimpered again. Idly it grasped at a soggy piece of paper and squinted at it, and perhaps it recognized the image in the faded box, and perhaps it read the block letters below that spelled out “BRING OUR JENNY HOME.” But perhaps it didn’t, as it just as quickly discarded the paper and grabbed up a shingle. Cars passed by on the road, some slowing as their drivers gawked, some pulling telephones from their pockets and purses, and amid whimpers the girl thing snarled at them.
The house began creaking with a hesitant rhythm as something moved inside. Stairs groaned and into a dusty living room stepped an old woman with white striped hair and a limp. When she stepped forward to peer out through the broken window caked with grime, she saw something more than a dark figure masquerading as a girl. She saw a daughter she’d lost years ago, and as the first sirens broke the morning silence, we might imagine that instead of snarling at the old woman and darting away into the tall grass, the girl fell into her mother’s waiting arms and began to sob.
Welcome to Gnarflax. Do you have your boarding pass? Is your implant loaded with enough units? Might you want us to take you the cabaret, where beautiful Lupkins will remove their Lupcovers and show you their Lupudders? Only one swipe of the fore-appendage, and your units will transfer you wherever you want to go.
Do you have the proper documentation to be in a place like this? We must scan your makeup bag to ensure you have brought nothing with which to harm the Lupkins. The Lupkins have their own built-in defense systems, of course, but the release of such neurotoxin in such a small room will destroy all of the other patrons as well as the staff of Naflecks who are simply here to serve and protect your methaholic beverages. Your genetic makeup bag has passed inspection, you may reingest it.
Enjoyed your share of Lupudders? Aren't, they wondrous, the way they spray nourishment in fountainous rhythm as she vibrates against your thorax and caresses your carapace? Come into the back room, then, we have a proposition for you. My partners and I have been watching you, and we've decided you must be a Keflin of a different color. Don't worry, this is not an exploitation like you've seen in the newsflesh webwork. The truth is, we've come across transmissions, strange ones from a distant green and blue lump long eaten by its own lightball.
There is the culture of an odd race of aliens in these data, and strange words they use to describe things. Concepts we scoff at, like “vanity,” and “honor.” If you are beautiful we display you, and if you are brave we put you to war. Questions abound in this strange stream of consciousness, such as “What is free will?” and “Why are we here?” Useless questions with obvious answers.
We'd like to loan you a box that will play these transmissions, a small cube that emits radiation. When you look into it you will discover that these beings are interminably ugly, and it may become necessary for you to evacuate the contents of your feed sack.
But we see lots of potential in this new world, the currently dead world across the galaxy. So if you can steel yourself against the disgusting creatures and their strange way of undulating in disposable skins to distasteful noise patterns, we'd appreciate it to the tune of twenty-thousand units every twelfth of a lightball rotation if you could make notes and discover just what sort of adjustments might be made to our cabarets and methaholes that these 'humans' have suggested. They are primitive, but we think they might have some ideas. Even more than that, in the future we believe that it's possible for us to grow to love these ugly beings. They might become something of a sensation among the undergrounders, Keflins and Hujmuggers and Naflecks and Riskawens and Lupkins and Buarns alike.
We will only require your notes every so often, and you may feel free to distribute them to us whenever you come to Gnarflex to collect your units.
Do you agree? Yes? Wonderful. We would do it ourselves, but our feed sacks are sore from all the evacuations. Nothing can be uglier than these things, we have come to conclude. Will your pincers and fore-appendages be enough to carry the radiation cube back with you to your ship? Yes? Wonderful. Don't lose the box. Tonight, if you can stand it, there will be a production of a sort of myth, a story these creatures take very seriously. It is about a human who accumulates disciples along the path to a great city where a king holds this human's fate in his hands.
It is called “The Wizard of Oz.” The disciples, one made of metal and one made of grass, are infinitely less ugly than the human with the head tentacles. Perhaps it would be a good story to get started on. Prepare your notes. Remember, twenty thousand units.
Go, now. Tap a Lupkin on the way out, so she can absorb a cred or two. They can't help that their genetic makeup bags fit them only for one occupation.
Neither can you.
The topic of Marcus's anthropology paper wasn't as clear to him as he'd have liked. He was trying to pull together white guilt and xenophobia, and sort of what happens when xenophobia doesn't offer so much phobia anymore, and awe over the differences in two races fades or is bred away. He thought of contestants on the Animal Planet show "My Extreme Animal Phobia" and how those who hated snakes would say things like "it's wrong that it's alive, it shouldn't be moving" until coming into close and repeated contact with those snakes and ultimately empathizing, in one case even coming through the experience with a pet snake of his own, letting it crawl all over him while he told it he loved it.
Still, it was a shaky premise. Even if he did well presenting his case, he was still comparing racism to extreme animal phobias. That was probably worth a 2.5 or 3.0, which normally he'd be glad to take, but he needed a 4.0, or his father would no longer pay for him to spend Christmas away and he'd have to go home. No, he wouldn't even consider it.
He thought all this with the naked girl beside him, her soft breaths calming, smooth. The night had gone as planned, or better, even including the hiccups. His roommate, well-intentioned as he might have been, popped back for a minute to "grab some books" he'd forgotten to bring with him to the library, and so somehow couldn't properly study (at a library? Where books were?) Marcus peeked from under covers feigning sleep while his ever-courageous cheerleader continued her subterranean explorations. He convinced himself his roommate hadn't noticed.
Now he was warm in bed beside her and he started dozing, turning the paper he hadn't written over in his mind. How would he write it? How could he?
Tomorrow she would leave for home, and he'd stay on campus over Thanksgiving, alone in the room. His parents would understand - heck, they'd suggested it. He'd use the extra time away from the turkey to write his paper. If he could just, this time, come from around from his paper to the good side of the grade and bring the money, the money oh the green
He woke up.
She was clutching him, breathing, not hard but fast. He blinked his eyes focused, and she bugged hers at him, trying to clear her throat. Marcus was alarmed.
"What - what."
"I have to leave." She almost growled it.
"But it's, Kelly, it's 3 in the mor-"
"If I stay here with you I'll go insane. I won't be able to forget."
She pulled herself off the bed, warmth spilling after her. Marcus turned to embrace her cold absence. She grabbed her coat and started dressing, and he closed his eyelids lightly, wondering if he should be surprised. He decided he actually was - Kelly was not the kind to have fits of panic from dead sleep.
"Kelly, did you hear something?"
She didn't respond, but he could hear her. Pulling on boots now, gloves. A hat.
"You're going out there by yourself?"
She'd already left.
He couldn't get back to sleep after that. What had she said? "If I stay here with you I'll go insane"? He hoped that wasn't her way of breaking up with him. He pulled his phone from his shoe and texted "are you ok?" eyes scanning the previous conversation they'd had going. "i'll be over around 8, watch a movie?" "yeah" "condoms?" "yeah." Nothing to indicate an impending breakup.
Eventually he fell asleep.
The next day he texted her if she was okay again but nothing came back. He figured she was probably fine, she just didn't want to hear from him, but just to be safe he rode his bike across campus to eat at Archibald Hall, where she lived. He used his meal card to swipe in and sat alone at a table doing homework.
He tried to do his Anthropology reading but he kept getting distracted as people walked by, kept looking up thinking he'd see Kelly. His eyes ingested the same paragraph at least five times, and when he remembered he had a paper due in two days and he had no idea what he was going to write it on he got a full body sweat. He tried a sixth time to get through the paragraph.
Other cultures -
"What are you doing here?" It was Kelly. She'd walked up to him, had an apple in her hand, two big bites taken out of it. She didn't look happy. Something on her face told him she was gearing herself up for some uncomfortable speech. His mouth went dry.
“Kelly, hey. Shit, hey, I was just on my way out. I can’t get any work done here anyway.” He packed up his pencil and closed his book, standing.
“It’s really okay. You don’t have to leave. I actually thought we could talk.”
A thought came to him then that he couldn’t shake. She wants to break up with you and you don’t know why, and you didn’t do anything you can fix.
“But I can? I can leave?”
She looked puzzled now. “Yeah, of course you can.”
“Okay - I’ll see you around!” And he left, knowing if anything he’d just convinced her to do what he’d feared she’d already decided.
By the time he got back there was a new text from her on his phone, a mirror of the one he'd sent earlier.
"Are you ok?"
He started typing back, then erased it, then started typing again. He hoped she wasn't watching it on her end, his indecision.
He had finally decided to go with "peachy" but that had all sorts of weird undertones so he erased it and chose not to say anything at all.
An hour later he realized she'd be home already, that campus was empty but for him and a few others. He felt immediately stupid.
He picked up the phone and unable to contain a feeling that this time he'd their relationship was over and it was his fault, he called Kelly.
As predicted, she didn't answer. It would be logical to assume she was in class, but the image in his mind's eye of her intentionally ignoring his call, the disgusted look in her eye, was too real to ignore.
"Hey, it's Kelly. You didn't reach me. Too bad."
He left a message, but almost didn't.
"Hi, Kelly. Uh."
He almost hung up right then.
"So you're probably wondering why I left earlier instead of saying goodbye. Well, part of it is that I didn't realize everyone was leaving today. I mean of course I knew that, but for some reason it never entered my mind today. Like, you know how when sometimes you pour orange juice on your cereal without thinking about it or put ice cream in the cupboard and don't realize until later when your dad finds it? Oh, say hi to your parents by the way. Jeez, I'm really sorry - I thought when I saw you that you were going to - that for some reason you were going to break up with me, just because last night was so weird, just because you woke up freaking out. Anyway, sorry. I hope you aren't mad. I - uh, I really hope I see you next week."
He hung up.
A few minutes later he got a text: "It's fine."
"What did you want to talk to me about really?" he typed.
She didn't respond.
Man, you really messed up. Man.
He walked to the C-store, picked up some pretzel peanut butter bits and some Mountain Dew. Then he downloaded a game on his XBox and spent the next four or five hours flying around a city, blowing up cars and finishing little side-quests. Every so often he'd pause and go pee, and when he was alone in the bathroom with only the sound of his trickling urine he couldn't help but think he'd wasted an opportunity to date a great girl. And she was a cheerleader, which shouldn't have mattered but it did somehow. Yeah, it did.
Finally it was two in the morning. He was tired, his eyes burned, and he figured he could make himself sleep.
The sheets still smelled like her but it would probably be the last time. He thought about his anthro paper. He probably wouldn't even start working on it again until the day it was due. Fuck if he got a 4.0 now, he'd take a 1.5 and look straight in his dad's face and say "I don't care what you think." It felt satisfying to say it in his head, and behind his closed eyes he could see echoes of the video game he'd found so boring compared to the girl he'd lost.
"I don't care what you think" he was saying to himself now, saying to himself as a little kid, as an old man, as a backwards version in a mirror. "I don't think, I don't care, what you think is not what you are, bring it back, bring back what you took from me, bring back what you took-"
He woke up.
It was too cold in the room and he wasn't wearing anything. The TV was still on, the desk lamp still burning. But he wouldn't be working anymore tonight, could barely keep his eyes open to look around. He had his finger on the lamp switch when he saw out of the corner of his left eye something outside the window (a face? - looking in at him?) But the desk lamp was off now and his eyes were mid-adjustment. He saw nothing.
The second was long enough to feel as though he'd stepped off the edge of something, like there was a bowl of fear that had spilled inside him, was splashing up against his insides.
His laptop screen was up, and bright. He stepped toward it, recognizing it as his sent messages queue.
The latest sent email had the subject line: “Anthropology 340: Final Exam” and there was a paperclip icon floated right. The recipient was his professor, bholland@pru.edu. Feeling like he was in a dream, he clicked on it.
In the body was one line he immediately recognized from a song that had been stuck in his head all day.
"Jesus was a carpenter, Yeezy played beats."
Then his signature, then an attachment. He clicked the attachment, a PDF, and a file preview window popped open.
The words there looked somewhat familiar to him, like the voices he sometimes had before falling asleep, like something he’d dreamed. They reminded him of earlier, even. But here it was. Perfectly formatted and with his name on the top left corner. He read through it, cringing at each line.
”I’ll never get a job with this degree.
And that's really okay with me. Really. I mean that. I sort of mean that. I mean sort of.
I fear very seriously that I am going to die very early in my life, having done nothing of record, and with the world at large pointing to my instabilities as reasons for not granting me the sort of respectful outro reserved for the likes of Twain.
It's strange, though I do consider myself a contemporary of Twain, perhaps even extemporaneously inhabiting his body, day and night. Or him mine, were it so. Anyway, my mind wanders at present and the fingers are harder to harness, each searching for exit from this maddening pound of head against black raised box bearing faded glyph.
Writing is a lightening, an untightening so frightening
Aound and round, wound up, unwound, one bound
by Character, a fair actor, lyric-trained and lion-maned
This whimsy is ill-sought.
Am I suppliant to my own time if I should choose to write in antiquated form simply for my own joy? Or does it behoove the wordsmith to entreat his mind to all possible form of historically reliable syntax? For if at any time a certain way of writing was the going thing, it is certainly worth studying with a student's poor enthusiasm. Let us say that for the future and in this present document I shall keep to the pidgin style of writing made popular in the 18th century by such asshole Charleses as Darwin and Dickens!
Lest we don't forget, the world is full of scum! Let's talk about it with all disdain and hope for improvement in the future!
Of course, the ability one might have to stretch this sort of writing out is questionable. And as it were questionable, I would question it. I would ask again for clarification. And since my morals went astray, the words come and keep coming and sometimes they don't even stop for the mail or for the rain or for the snow or for the sunshiney dayo.
Drinking is wonderful in every way. Love and hope and joy and smell of liquor, all at once inside my head."
He hadn’t been drinking, had he? No, not that night. And Mark Twain? Charles Dickens? Why would he have written down his thoughts on those particular writers?
He quickly typed a sweaty email to his Anthropology professor, explaining that someone had played a joke on him and to disregard the turned-in paper. He'd turn in the real version at the end of the week.
"Have a good Thanksgiving, okay? Do it for me. Sincerely, Marcus."
His finger hovered over the send button for a few seconds before pressing it. Did this feel familiar? Did he remember sending this email? Maybe he had, although it felt a lot more like a dream than a memory.
Thanksgiving was about as boring as he'd expected. He woke up early and took a walk around campus. It was cold and rainy and the campus was empty but for a few kids like him who had no home to go to. He got a coffee on Grand River and sat idly looking at his phone while he drank it. Still no word from Kelly. What if she'd wanted to invite him home to her house for Thanksgiving and he'd precluded that possibility.
For lunch he heated up a frozen dinner in the microwave room, then took his laptop down to the game room to try to get his paper started for real this time.
He stared at a blinking cursor.
"Understanding is a uniquely human phenomenon - certain animals are capable of behavior patterns that will yield them desired or necessary results (such as survival and reproduction), but nothing to indicate they have a deeper, underlying understanding of the world or their place in it."
He yawned. Why had he gotten up so early? He caught himself closing his eyes and pinched the skin on the inside of his elbow. To block out the buzz of the fluorescent lights he pulled on a pair of headphones and put on a focus playlist. Then he typed some more.
”Understanding comes from questioning, and humans are the only species on the planet Earth, even among primates, capable of asking questions and integrating the answers to those questions into an existing private worldview. This, combined with the idea that fear comes from being unable to understand an other, would explain both the effectiveness of taught racism (even in the absence of black skin) and the lack of willingness to expunge those beliefs in the face of clear evidence the beliefs are false.”
He was hungry, but he had some Chex mix in his laptop bag so he took some out and chewed it. He got up and took a handful of darts from the dartboard.
"What is the basis of human fear?" he said, then chucked a dart. It landed above the baord, but dug into the wall.
"Why do humans fear other humans on the basis of skin color?" he said, then chucked another. This one landed in the outer ring.
"Why am I at school on Thanksgiving, when I should be at home with my family or with Kelly's?" He chucked the last dart. This one landed in the outer center ring.
He sighed, cracked his knuckles and knelt to type.
"But it seems that only when the other is of an equal or greater standing does this fear take hold. Fear is reserved for other tribes, for other cultures, for other worldviews. An elephant, for example, is not worthy of this type of xenophobia - it's an animal that is easily outsmarted, easily exploited and the methods to do so will be the same regardless of when, or who employs them. An elephant, while stronger and faster and more able to kill a man, represents a challenge, not a fear."
Where was he going with this? He put his head between his knees and yelled. Then he looked around the game room. Nobody came to see. The game room was creepy when it was empty like this. He rubbed his eyes.
CLACK! CLACK!
He looked up through blurred vision to see the last dart popping off the board, like it'd been plucked, (CLACK!) and skitter across the floor and under his chair.
There was half a second where he couldn't move, but then he was up and making his way for the door, feeling that behind him something was coming, was reaching a for him. He'd feel a cold finger on his neck any moment now.
He made it outside, safe, but he was missing something. His laptop.
"Dammit."
Something had been in there with him. Was it another student, playing a trick? He'd think that but who was left on campus? How had they stayed hidden?
He had to retrieve his laptop but he didn't want to go back. He had his phone.
He texted Kelly, "You won't believe what just happened to me in the game room."
He stared at the text conversation for a minute, saw the little "Delivered" tag pop up, and he sadly chewed his lip. She wouldn't respond.
What else could he do to kill time? He called his mother.
"Happy Thanksgiving, mom!"
"Brian, how nice to hear from you!"
"It's Marcus, mom."
"Oh, Marcus. Aren't you supposed to be writing a paper?"
"I'm almost done with it. Just thought I'd take a break to call and see how you and dad are."
"We're just fine. Your father is watching the game and I'm watching the turkey."
"I wish I could be there."
"Your grades are more important. Thanksgiving happens every year."
"Still, I feel like I should be there with you guys."
"I know. Hey, your brother Brian is supposed to call, and we'd like to keep the line open. Is there anything else you need? I'd let you talk to your father but the Lions are in the red zone."
"Winning or losing?"
"Losing." By a lot, he could tell in her voice. His father drank more when they lost.
"Okay mom. I love you.”
“Bye, Marcus. Concentrate on your grades. Your future is important to us."
She hung up. A breeze picked up and a thunderhead seemed to be swirling above him. It would rain soon. For him, it already was.
He swiped his student ID and went back inside. Then, checking his nerves, he walked downstairs and prepared himself to enter the game room.
Inside, it was dark but for the glow from his laptop. Had he left it open? Had he turned the lights off?
He stood near the door and scanned the room with his eyes, seeing nothing. But the feeling he'd had before, that someone was there with him, that something was waiting for him to just take a step or two closer, and it would show itself. He felt the beginnings of a paralyzing fear locking his knees and quickening his heart rate.
"So?" he said to himself, "So?"
Then, without really deciding to do it he sprinted forward, going for the laptop. He smashed his leg against the corner of something - the ping pong table - but didn't feel it. Then he had the laptop. He pedaled backwards toward the door until his back made contact. He closed the laptop, and everything was pitch dark again.
Without opening the door he shuffled one step to his left, searching on the wall with his left arm for a light switch. When he found it, he was disappointed to find it was one of those outlet coverings with a key slot, the kind a janitor would need to engage.
Then, behind him, which made no sense since his back was to the wall, he felt the air move. It slid along his neck, ruffling the tiny hairs there. Marcus whirled, but could see nothing. He fumbled for the door handle and twisted. Then he was in the basement hallway, the door to the game room shut behind him, laptop in his arms, shivering but coated with a thin layer of sweat.
Back in his room, he chugged a bottle of soda and tried to talk himself through everything.
"It was an air vent. The lights were on a timer. I left the laptop open."
The first two things, sure. But the laptop? Even if he'd left it open it should have been asleep by the time he'd come back. It was a good half hour between the darts (and how did he explain that?) and when he'd gone back in. The only thing way he'd have been able to see it in the darkness was by its slowly winking white power light, the one that meant the battery was still charged.
He opened the laptop, expecting to see his paper. It wasn't there. Instead, he was looking at his email account, the "sent" tab.
Listed there were five new sent emails.
"What the hell?"
One was to his dad. One was to his mom. One was to Kelly. One was to his Anthropology professor.
And one was to himself.
The subject line of each, except for the last one, was "Happy Thanksgiving!"
The last one, addressed to himself, had the subject line "Help us!"
He felt his mouth go dry, his face flush and his whole body flash-boil, covering him in sweat again.
He got up, shook his hands, and paced back and forth around his computer. Someone had used his computer to send emails to everyone he cared about, was this some kind of threat? He tried to prepare himself for whatever it was but also knew he couldn't handle this. He wasn't ready.
Instead of clicking on any of the emails he popped open a bag of cheese curls and started eating.
His phone dinged. It was a text message from Kelly. He tapped it open. "Why would you send me that?" it read.
Dripping with fear and smelling himself, he knelt in front of the laptop and clicked the email that had been sent to Kelly.
There was a short paragraph, and an image.
We regret the limbic response of flight we caused you with our appearance. When we tried to follow you after you left, we wanted to show ourselves to you and explain what we are, why we were looking in. You weren't supposed to see, not then.
The image, taken with presumably Marcus's iSight camera, showed a face that seemed familiar, one he felt like he'd seen in dreams.
It also wasn't human. The figure in the image seemed to be waving.
His phone buzzed again. "You're sick, trying to scare me like this."
Marcus tapped back. "I'm scared too. I didn't send anything." Then he opened the emails to his parents.
Very soon we won't be calling. We love you.
Marcus
Then he opened the email to his anthropology professor.
Attached you'll find our paper, "Prescriptors for a Protocol of Imminent First Contact with Universal Travelers" along with a case study for Oort life. We hope for at least 4.0 University Credits.
Marcus
The attached PDF was 1000 pages long.
Then he opened the email addressed to him.
Marcus,
You can help us.
His phone buzzed. “You really didn’t?”
He tapped back “I’m looking at the email. Is this what you saw? Is this why you left?”
We are concluding our examination of the fauna on your planet. That we’ve come so close to an civilizational apogee is a slight wonder to us, as we’ve only had centuries to prepare. It seems time has been running out.
His phone buzzed. “It was looking into your window. Or it was in the window looking out. It was disgusting.”
There is a problem that we will need help to solve. Portions of your society, controlled by money and by those wrapped in white skin, are exterminating those with darker skin. To us, those of the long view, the eventuality is imminent. This wealth, this whiteness, this murder - it cannot continue. The pain, the loss, the evil - it is what will prevent our mutual survival. There are those among you that would survive a first contact with the Oort, and there are those among you that would clamor for war at any cost, would assure mutual destruction. Between the fears there is a connection.
We have been reading your work, Marcus. You, among a few others, are actively thinking about how to solve the problem of racism among your own species. It may not be enough, but we’d like to extend to you our resources, our tools. You will know what to do.
We’ve chosen you, Marcus. Help us.
There were two more texts on his phone.
“I want to kill it,” she had typed. “I want it dead.”
He clicked back to their email to Kelly. They’d sent an apology and a selfie - this first contact with a seemingly empathetic, peaceful alien mind or set of minds - and all she had wanted to do was kill it. He went back and reread the email meant for him.
There are those among you that would survive a first contact with the Oort, and there are those among you that would clamor for war at any cost, would assure mutual destruction.
They were using her to illustrate the fear they meant. They were showing him that even inside the one he loved the most there was the tendency to destroy, without knowing or wanting to know anything more.
They were also using the email to show him what they looked like. And it wasn’t as terrifying as he’d expected. Sure, there was something wrong-seeming there, he wasn’t sure what the different parts of it did or were meant to do but now that he’d seen its face he was no longer afraid.
I wash my face and ask the wall to turn on the morning address. The music starts and then he’s there; a whisp of hair signifying his grand entrance.
“Hey everyone, happy Wednesday! Wednesdays were always one of my favorite days — I think because you’re half over with something that might be bad and you still have half of something left that might be good. Think about that today when you’re hard at work or trying to learn. Also I want to remind everyone — remember when you all hated me and I had to pretend that I was racist to get everyone to vote for me and then after I won enough votes I completely changed everything about my campaign because I actually wanted to be a good president? Do you remember that? I know I fooled you once but I haven’t fooled you again since that. I’m your friend now. Aren’t we friends?”
I nod, just in case he can see.
“Good. I know you want to trust me, and I think you can trust me. I’m very trustworthy. And I want to be able to trust you too. The United States government and — we’re facing a lot of different things from around the world forces and evil. All the time. And to keep you safe we have to keep things a little tighter. And things have to be a certain way to maintain your freedom. So if you hear anyone talking about me or plotting against me, that sort of thing, we’re not going to let that sort of thing go on.”
I start putting my folders for work in a shoulder bag.
“I know some of you are still having some problems with the added terms to the presidency, because it doesn’t look good, it makes it seem like I extended the presidency for myself when of course it was to stabilize America. But let me just explain why I did it and where I’m coming from and why I even got into this in the first place. So as you might know I was a very rich man.”
I sit down. I’m dressed and ready to leave but I can’t until he’s done talking.
“And since gambling was just not very fun I tried to get into politics and donating since you could buy elections back then. At first I was going to do it out of spite because the government is a hard game to win, you know I really wanted Romney in 2012 because Obama I think, Obama had his run. Obama we gave him his term. So at first when I started running for president and it actually was gaining some traction I treated it like it was real when everyone in the media treated it like it was a media stunt or something like that — you guys remember I’m sure. But anyways so I wanted to run for president. But then I had this idea of just…just basically putting whoever I wanted into the White House. And it would be this great thing making it so that only one vote mattered and proving that the whole system was broken if someone could hack it so obviously and also you know Mitt Romney would be a damn good president. Well we all know that after I became president I had a change of heart. I decided Mitt Romney was a big loser, especially after he started trying to make me look bad. I know a lot of you liked him, but he’s not around anymore, is he? And of course I had nothing to do with that but people are always saying that about me. Just pick up your phone and dial 911 if you hear anyone saying that about me.”
I nod again.
“Also I thought about what I knew from the Snowden stuff, and all those secrets. I thought, if I just install another politician, what’ll happen? Politics. Politics will happen. And all these secret programs and secret wars and explosions and Isis and blah blah — only some politician was going to get to know about that stuff. No true American would ever get a look at them. These politicians aren’t American. I’m not even sure they’re human. So instead I decided I’d have to do it myself. And since I knew I couldn’t do it based on the truth, I had to lie. I lied to become president.”
I look at the door. I wait.
“I let people get beat up at my rallies. Sometimes it even looked like I was encouraging it. And that was wrong. And it was wrong of you to think that. But I couldn’t let everything that I’ve built and all of the requests from individuals — I couldn’t let those requests go ignored. And that’s why I began to care so much about the presidency and what it means to the country of America and if we allow the presidency to be impermanent, then we take away from how great America is, where we’d like it to be all the time. So when I installed my two Supreme Court justices I made sure they took into account the inflation of time. Because since the founding fathers wrote all of our great America literature, time has gotten a lot more valuable. Or less valuable? Or time passes faster and these days a minute isn’t worth as much of a — anyway I’ll do some research on it. But I just hope you have a great Wednesday and be productive and do your part and buy buy buy like those Backstreet kids, they were just terrible, weren’t they? Terrible. Not even a boy band, really.”
His face blurs and he taps the camera. My wall quakes.
“Hey, is this even on? Fuck.” Music again. Then he’s gone.
I’m late to work and punished for it, but so is everyone else.
When I came upon the For Sale By Owner sign in the middle of the forest, I thought someone had played a joke. It wasn’t propped up against a tree or next to a rock or any other significant landmark. Some-one’s house was no longer for sale. I skipped toward it, wanting to pick it up, turn it over. Take it with me so that when I got home I could tell Sheila and use it as a prop for my recounting. “Right there, in the middle of it all, someone left this sign,” I imagined myself saying. “As if the world itself were up for grabs.”
I was so occupied with the sign that I almost fell in.
It was a hole in the ground, right in front of the sign. Covered from distance by the growth of ferns and yellow saw grass. As big in diameter as a basketball player, and dark. I hadn’t even meant to stop, wouldn’t have, except some instinct locked my muscles and jerked my body to a halt. I stood there, aghast. Looking into it made me dizzy.
I remembered being a boy and sticking my head down the well behind my country house, dropping stones to see how long it would take for each PLUNK to reach me. I was fascinated with holes as a boy and even now I had the urge to chuck some unsuspecting slab of limestone down this one's belly.
I got on my own belly and inched forward, the way I had in Flagstaff, at the canyon. My whole head and neck were dangling over the hole and even though my body anchored me on solid ground, hands wrapped in tall grass like handles, it felt as though I were about to fall. I could see maybe twenty or thirty feet into the hole before it got too dark to make out the edges anymore. I whispered to myself, building up the courage to let loose a yell into the chasm, and when I did it there wasn’t an echo. I yelled again, and then stopped, nervous. There had to be an echo, hadn’t there? Nausea started in on my guts and I had to roll over and look at the sky. Then I looked at the For Sale sign again.
Did it belong to the hole? It was close enough - closer than it was to any of the other things in the immediate landscape. But who would be selling a hole? Who would even bother to claim a hole in the first place? I knew the answer to that second one - I would. When I was nine I’d dug my own hole near the bike path in my backyard, big enough around for me to sit in and deep enough so my head would only barely emerge if I stood my full height. I’d tried to con my cousins into paying to see a bottomless pit, not much, just a few nickels each. They’d been suspicious, but my aunts and uncles humored me, dropping coins into my soiled hands and pretending to be impressed. I’d had a fantasy about a bottomless pit since I was even younger than that, imagining that if I jumped into one I’d fall so long that falling became unremarkable. I’d die of thirst before I ever hit any bottom.
I sat up and pondered at the sign. There was a phone number on the bottom of it, written neatly in black marker. I had my phone.
“Hello?” a man said on the third ring.
“Hi. I’m calling about your…hole for sale?”
“Oh. Wonderful. Are you there now?”
“Yeah. Sitting by it.”
“Can you stay? I’ll be along as soon as I can.”
“Sure, I guess. How far do you have to -” He’d hung up.
Good one, Elliot. What if the guy lives in the city? What if he commutes? You just committed to staying by this hole indefinitely. It was almost romantic. The hole and I had just met and here I was, prepared to give it hours of company. As it turned out, I only had to wait five minutes.
He came from behind me, silently.
“Hello.”
I jumped when he spoke, which scared me twice as much because my legs were dangling over the edge. I turned around, sheepish. He was a tall man, at least seven feet, but slight, and the dark clothes he wore bagged around him like curtains. He wore old glasses, lenses milked and frames made of wire. His translucent gray hair and the wrinkles on his waxy face made me think of my grandfather in the casket. He smiled at me.
“Oh. Hi.”
“She doesn’t like when you sit like that. Gets her excited.”
He gestured to the hole. I took my legs out. He laughed.
“My little joke.”
“Right.” I got to my feet, and he held out a hand that could have palmed a pumpkin. Shaking it was like being a kid again, and he did have that feeling about him. Like this man would make anyone who came near him feel not only small, but young. Foolish.
“Elliot,” I said, and the man nodded. He didn’t give his name.
“So you’re here because you’d like to purchase the hole.” He eyed me, like he was trying to figure if I was worthy of owning one.
“Maybe I’d like to. I don’t know much about it. As a prospective buyer I might have a few questions. How much is it worth? Does it have any special history, or a name? Have you had it appraised recently? Finally, is there any structural or water damage I should worry about?”
The old man smiled big. “Let’s start with the water damage.”
“Okay.”
“Nine summers ago I sat out here with a hose I had snaked from my home. More than a mile of hose. I pumped out an entire pond’s worth of water, seeing if I could fill it up. Couldn’t. Didn’t get any fuller than it is right now. Structurally, she’s about as sound as a hole is going to get. Most empty parts in the ground are caves, or are dug out like mines, and those all have structural problems. Cave-ins. But here, look. This hole just goes straight down. What’s going to cave in?”
“You’re a natural born hole salesman.”
“Or I would be, if I’d ever sold a hole before. Mostly I consider myself a poet. Now listen, I can’t address your appraisal question, because I’m not familiar with real estate. Never dealt with any of those house people. But this hole has a history, sure. Been with my family for a long time. My uncle died and left it to my brother and I when we were sixteen. Used to be kind of an obsession with us. We’d come out here and camp by it on weekends. The next summer my brother got into some trouble and ran away. The police were on him, and he would have gone straight off to prison. They never found him. I came out here a week after he’d gone and found one of his shoes right on the edge. In the shoe was a little note for me.”
“He jumped in?”
The old man nodded. “I was under the impression this was a kind of special hole, the kind that doesn’t stop. So I figured he might still be alive. I spent the next four days on my chest, yelling down the hole that I loved him and that I knew he was all right. But Mister Elliot, that was
seventy years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No need to be. I’ve made peace with her since then. I feed her things, sometimes.”
For a second, I thought he meant me. Way to be, Elliot. The crazy old man is going to push you in. A sacrifice to the hole god. He didn’t make a move toward me, but I put my left foot behind my right to brace myself if he tried anything. How many dead things were at the bottom? I guessed a lot.
What sort of things?”
He waved his hand. “Chairs, desks. Televisions. Once a piano, and that time I was sure I’d hear it hit, explode in a symphony of taught strings set loose, keys dancing against her walls. But no. I mentioned my poetry, didn’t I? She’s the only one who's ever read it. I fill a wastepaper basket with crumpled bits of verse, douse it in butane, and just before I tip it, I light a match. That’s when I can see the furthest into her. Until the light is just a winking in the distance, like a satellite in the night sky. Over the years I’ve probably filled her with a landfill’s worth of odds and ends. Of course, filling is most likely the wrong word.”
I wasn’t sure how much of this I believed.
“Did you name it?”
He shook his head. “Not me. I don’t know who did. But her name is Lenore.”
“Oh.” It explained the way he spoke of the hole like it was some old ship, or stranger, an actual woman. I puffed out my chest.
“Well, sir. I’m impressed. I’ve never seen such a hole, and I’m sure it’s the only one like it. I can’t imagine how much you’d be selling it for.”
The old man started chewing his cuticles. “What would you do with her?”
I hadn’t thought of it. I hadn’t even decided I wanted the hole, but something in the back of my mind knew that if the price was anything I could pay, that I would do my best. It was Sunday afternoon, I was at probably the end of my hike, and at the moment nothing seemed more important than owning this hole.
“I don't know. Maybe rappelling. Rock climbing. Bungee-jumping, even? Try to get to the bottom and come back up.”
He nodded. “I would sell it for something small. Do you have…a bottle of water and a flashlight?”
I did. I passed him my CamelBak and a small LED flashlight I dug out of my pack. He traded me a piece of folded paper from his back pocket. He pointed to several lines, and I signed them. Then he signed a line, and I put the paper in my pack. Lenore was mine. I dialed Sheila. She either wasn't going to believe it, or she wasn't going to care.
The old man looked at me, wistful.
“You won’t get to the bottom. None of us will. But we’ll make the best of the journey.”
He went to the edge of the hole and looked down into it. The water bottle was strapped to his back, the straw in his mouth. He clicked on the flashlight and looked back at me, winking. Then, before I could move, he pitched forward and disappeared.
“SEVENTY YEARS,” I could hear him yelling to his brother,
“SEVENTY YEARS' HEAD START!”
Joey didn't usually have trouble sleeping after they made love. He’d just roll over and wake up the next morning.
That night he lay staring at the ceiling until his back hurt, then turned on his side. Mary was asleep already. What had he thought she did afterwards? Knit or read or something? That hadn’t happened. Why had he assumed she had to be doing anything at all?
When his side began to hurt he turned the other way. What time was it? It had to be getting late now, hadn’t it? After midnight, at least. His stomach growled. Enough of this. He’d get up and walk downstairs, make himself a bowl of cereal and drink some milk. Watch a bit of tele-vision. Maybe fall asleep in the chair.
His stomach growled again. Louder. He swatted at it. Three seconds later and the sound came once more. It confused him - it didn’t feel like his stomach was growling. Three more seconds and he realized it was coming from Mary. He smiled in the dark, marveling at the volume of his sleeping wife’s digestive tract. He imagined it full of food, pushing air bubbles around. It sounded animal. A bullfrog chirping in a pond some-where. He imagined Mary’s belly blowing up in the dark like the sack under the frog’s chin. Three more seconds and it came again.
“Gwaaaa.”
He counted along, tapping his finger on the bed between them. One. Two. Three.
“Gwaaaa.”
This was uncanny. How long could it go on for, at this rate? The growling noises coming from a stomach were usually from the resettling of whatever was left inside, weren’t they? Shouldn’t it settle already? Surely the noises would stop.
“Gwaaaa.”
But they didn’t stop. He counted off nine more times in the dark, fascinated. He put his hand on her belly and felt them ripple. One. Two. Three.
“Joey.”
He froze. It wasn’t his wife’s voice. It sounded like the frog. Her belly had said his name. He stopped counting but three seconds later it came again.
“Joey.”
“What?” He said, too stupefied to keep silent. What did he expect it to say next? Surely it wouldn't answer him. Had he even heard it really say his name at all?
“Listen.”
“Oh my God.” He wanted to shake her, to wake her up and make it stop, but couldn’t bring himself to move. Instead, he counted. One. Two. Three.
“Hello.”
He felt his head go flat, his eyes saw ribbons of white in the dark. Was his nose bleeding? His finger started tapping again. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“I am.”
Joey held his breath. What would it tell him next? That it was hungry? What would he do if it said it wanted a sandwich - would he jump from the bed and throw himself out the window? He already wanted to, and who the fuck cared if it said “hungry,” or not?
“The Lord.”
If he had been himself he would have dismissed the entire thing. But he was tired, traumatized. He had also started thinking about his mother and the puddle of blood that had looked like Jesus. This was like that. Joey wasn’t religious, not to the letter, but he went to church and he pretended to understand. He’d tried to read the Bible, at least.
“You are?” he asked his wife’s gut.
“I am.”
If someone had told him he’d one night be talking to God in his wife’s belly growls, he would have probably turned around and walked away from that man as fast as he could. Now, he was surprised at how easily he accepted it.
For the next five minutes he kept quiet, listening to it speak. The Lord said, in two syllable pairs at the same three second interval:
“There is - a child - inside - Mary - he will - become - the Christ - reborn - I am - telling - you this - so that - when he - is born - you will - love and - keep him - as though - he were - your own.”
“He’s not mine?” Joey said, confused.
“Mine.”
“Oh. Right. Do I have to name him anything? Like, should he be called Jesus, or what?”
But Mary’s belly didn’t shiver again.
He went downstairs and ate his cereal, unsure of how to feel. He was numb. He sat in front of the television and watched high definition insects devour each other until he was too keyed up to do anything but pass out.
The nine months went by fairly quick, Joey getting promoted in his construction job to assistant foreman. Mary stayed at home and made baby clothes out of multicolored yarn. When it came, it was darker than both of them, and Middle-Eastern looking. Mary was apprehensive, afraid of what Joey would say, but he didn’t. He figured God had just made this one look like the last one.
They named it Jesse, and Joey did his best to love him.
When Jesse was five, he set fire to the neighbor’s house. Joey maintained it was an accident, but kept his reasoning to himself. He’d been at work, and Mary had been out shopping for groceries. Still, it had to be a coincidence. No son of God was going to commit arson. Child protective services came by and asked a lot of questions after the fact, but Joey didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t around most of the time, and while sure, little Jesse had his tantrums just like the next kid, he wasn’t the type to be playing with fire. Mary was convinced they were going to slap the two of them with neglect and take Jesse, but that didn’t happen. After a while it all just went away.
In elementary school, Jesse and the principal got to know each other too well, and Mary kept having to go down and apologize for the other kids who went home with black eyes and bloody noses. Every time Joey heard about it he got concerned, because he knew how cruel other kids could be to someone who looked a little different. But no son of God was going to be a bully. That much he was sure of.
In middle school Jesse got caught selling drugs to sixth graders. Ecstasy in pill form, little crosses printed on the sides. He’d told one girl it would give her a religious experience, and she’d had a minor freakout in one of the bathroom stalls, sweating through her sun dress and tearing her hair out. She’d had to get stitches in each of her palms, from where her fingernails dug in. Joey couldn’t fool himself anymore. His kid was one of the troublemakers. What if that whole talking belly thing had just been his imagination? His conversation with the Lord just a waking dream? But he’d believed it so long now that there wouldn’t be any going back, even in the face of doubt. Jesse was just a late bloomer, he was sure of it. When the time came, he’d show the world who he was. Lamb of God, version two.
Jesse fought with his mother often, belittling her and threatening physical domination. He was taller than both of them by then. Joey kept out of the disputes, and before long he could tell his son despised him as well. Any time Joey spoke up, Jesse just sneered at him. “You're not my father,” he'd say. “Look at you. Whiter than she is.”
In high school, Jesse started a cult. It started with a few kids, jocks and bruisers, but that little group persuaded and intimidated a bunch more to join. By the time any of the teachers found out about it, kids were already cutting off bits of themselves and feeding each other as a kind of sacrament. Of course, they couldn't prove it was Jesse, even though he admitted it freely. The trouble was, every other kid in the cult also claimed responsibility for its existence. The school couldn't kick them all out (by that point they numbered almost two-hundred) so the assistant principal made an example of the few he thought had the largest likelihood of having a hand in it. Jesse was one of these.
By sixteen the boy had turned inward, and kept to himself in his room. Joey hardly saw him, and even his mother who was home all day only saw him for brief moments in the afternoons, when he'd take whole boxes of cereal into his lair, where he played crashing death metal and read Nietzche. Mary didn't bother trying to speak to him anymore, because any word or look she made was always taken as a provocation and turned into an argument. And then she had no recourse. He would yell, and she would end up crying. At night she told her husband. Joey felt bad for her, but he had more responsibility than ever at work, since he'd been promoted again, to foreman.
One night, Jesse stole a car and led police on a high-speed chase for over an hour. When they caught him, he told them he was the son of God. They cuffed his wrists and ankles and brought him in.
Joey came to the station and bailed him out with some money he'd been saving in a high-yield account for retirement. The boy scowled at him and didn't speak the entire way home.
That night, after his wife fell asleep, Joey cried. He did it quietly, and only allowed himself to keep on for ten minutes. After that, he pulled it in and tried to sleep. He couldn't.
"Gwaaaa."
His wife's stomach growled.
"Gwaaaa."
Joey's heart quickened, like it always did when Mary's belly did this. Maybe this time it would be the Lord telling him it had made a mistake. "Sorry," it would say, in its two syllable halt, "I was - was wrong - not Christ - just a - bad kid."
"Please," he hissed. "Please tell me what to do."
He counted, breath held.
One.
Two.
Three.
It starts with me in the lobby of a bank in Chicago. I don’t know how I got here, or why I’m wearing a tee-shirt and a jacket only. It’s twenty-five degrees, according to a school ticker that also advertises that seventy-nine percent of its students rated excellent on the ISAT. I am standing between two glass paneled doors. One leads to the cold, one leads to the interior of the bank. I am looking ominous near a pair of automated teller machines. I am fairly sure I'm waiting for someone. When he or she shows up, I'll know. I don’t worry about the fact that I don’t know who I’m waiting for, or that I have no recollection of traveling to this particular bank. I feel I probably walked. I’m wearing leather shoes without socks, and there is a slippery accumulation of dirt and sweat under my feet. I am sliding around in boats made from dead animals.
I don’t know how long I’ve been waiting, but my skin is cold and there is a persistent line of snot rappelling from my left nostril. It could be the silk from a spider’s asshole, and it never stops coming. After several moments of trying to wipe it away, I no longer bother. It comes, and I let it, seeing how far it will reach before breaking off. It gets to my knee, and the lower half of it breaks off and gathers in a pile in front of me. The process repeats.
This is me when I’m alone. I look into the bank and find a hefty teller staring at me. I make myself look as suspicious as I can. The line of snot is swinging back and forth, and my hands are jammed into my pockets as far as they will go. I am slouching, and with my mouth I begin to appear as if I am speaking gibberish. The hefty man looks away.
Later, when I am alone, I am in Sears Roebuck. It is filled with short round women, all latina, tugging along little brown children. They are shopping for the same clothes they’re already wearing. Nothing fits together. I think, what the fuck have we done? You don’t belong here, I want to say to one. You belong in a desert, a jungle, sagging breasts hanging bare and sticks stuck through your face. What the fuck, I want to say, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry we made you into what you are now, because otherwise what are you all doing here, in this northern wasteland, in this tiny building with all this failing capitalism? You don’t belong. Neither of us belong.
I’m looking for socks. I find some, womens, on a wall entitled, “accessories.” This description isn’t odd, it’s wrong. Socks are a necessity. An addiction. There is nothing greater than the feeling of pulling on new, never-worn socks. There is no drug that can replicate it, no pair of tits that can make you forget it, no book in the world that can make you feel such faith in humanity.
But these socks are womens’ socks. There are no men’s socks, it seems. Not even when I ride the escalator to the second floor, an ancient thing that rumbles like a washing machine and forces me to imagine an open Maytag waiting for me at the top like some woman’s gaping mouth, wanting to eat me alive.
No socks even then, at the top of the Maytag escalator. I return to accessories. I take a pair of socks. I don’t have any money. There is a bag in my left hand, and a book spilling out of jacket pocket. I have just bought Voltaire, Joyce, and The Turn Of the Screw. My pocket is housing Paul Auster’s In The Country of Last Things. I know it is probably that I’ll never finish any of them, but the words are a comfort. I take the socks. Women’s white socks. I don’t hide them.
I walk to the cashier. I ask him where the bathroom is, and I can see in his eyes that he thinks I am going there to get sick. I don’t look well. Perhaps this is a common occurrence at Sears Roebuck, and he is more worried about me emptying myself on the floor of the bathroom than he is of me committing any sort of larceny. He points, grudgingly, behind him. I can see in his face that if I get sick, he will have to clean it up.
I don’t like him.
In the bathroom I put down Voltaire. I rip the bag of women’s socks open with my teeth, and I pull a pair of them on over my feet.
There is nothing like the feeling, have I told you that? No opiate, no woman, no book is any better. I put my shoes on and stand up. My books I place on the toilet tank. I look around at the bathroom, imag-ining the man on his hands and knees, scrubbing away. My fingers I place down my throat. I yark and cover the tile with bananas, nutella, coke and blood. The mixture is a warm brown.
This is me, still in the bank, still standing there with a rope of snot hanging from my nose. The man I’m waiting for enters, uses an ATM, and motions for me to follow him. We leave, and begin to walk. Wind comes at us directly, freezing my eyeballs and the liquid inside the cochlea of my right ear, making me nauseous.
We don’t talk. Inside the coffee shop we go to, I order a coke and a banana and brown sugar crepe. The price should have been 4.75 and another 1.50 for the coke, but the man (he is Greek, and his English is very good) tells me it is 8.82. I don’t argue. He cannot have misheard me, but he gives me something different. A banana and nutella crepe. I haven’t had nutella before, but it reminds me of chocolate and so that’s what I pretend it is.
I am full. The man across from me is typing on a laptop. We still haven’t spoken.
Next we are in a bookstore. I cannot find any poetry, and so I pick the Joyce, the Voltaire, and the Henry James. Behind one of the racks the man who doesn’t speak gives me two keys, which I pocket. At the checkout there is a tall girl with crimped blond hair and glasses. Her voice is musical, and she smiles at me. She smiles at everyone. I think about having her naked, bent over a pile of books. She smiles at me, and tells me I’m buying the good stuff. I think about giving her the good stuff on a pile of the good stuff. She smiles at me, and she says thank you, and I say thank you, and I leave.
The man has left me, only moments before tucking a small wad of paper into my hand and turning the other way. I read it, and then chew it up. I spit it onto the side of a building as I pass, and it sticks. The building is Sears Roebuck. I think about my feet, and the way they squish around in my shoes. I think about socks, and about the feeling of pulling on new ones. I go in.
The door is a revolving door, and as I go through one of its little corner-pie chambers I think about this city and its unhealthy obsession with revolving doors. Human roundabouts.
I’m walking to the address on the paper, hungry again after unloading my crepe. I see a woman with a white puffy dog, watch a man who looks a little like Brad Pitt get out of his car. I see a cyclist with long hair and rubber bands around his ankles, and watch a little girl with soccer ball in hand bound out of a house to get into an SUV. I realize that everything is significant, and the order doesn’t matter. At the same time, nothing is significant, and there is no order. Profound, and at the same time, I don’t care. The square key unlocks the apartment building, the round one the apartment. That is how it has been and how it will be. And at the same time, things fall apart. Nothing lasts.
Not even anything.
I don’t know which one of me is writing this, or if I even need to. Maybe one of me wrote it already, or is planning on it. Maybe we all write something like this at some point. I don’t know, but I’m the only one of me around right now, and I have nothing better to do.
When I was little, and all of me were, I used to dream nested things. I’d be in a supermarket, carrying a bag full of jelly beans. Then I’d wake up, a floating eight year old with a bag of jelly beans, daring my bed to float up and meet me. Out the window a few more of me would be playing in the dark. Jump rope, that one. Two playing tag, another four or five swimming in the pool. I understand that these are all me in different dreams I already had, or haven’t yet.
Looking around is okay, but there are words on the walls. Big and red, and I can’t read them. It’s not until I’m older that I start to read in dreams, and at eight years old, the words drop me and I wake up without the jelly beans, under my bed.
I must have fallen through, or else I roll out from under expecting to find another one of me still asleep, and maybe one above him, floating with a bag of jelly beans. But at eight, no. This doesn’t happen until later, when I’m twenty-four.
I’m twenty four and this isn't a dream.
The floating me isn’t holding jelly beans. He’s got a plane. A flat surface that is black on both sides. It’s not any particular shape. Not rectangular, or circular like those ACME black holes Wile E. Coyote used to buy in bulk on Saturday mornings, but that same general idea. Anyway, I’m standing there, in my boxers, watching myself floating there, and another one of me asleep in the bed underneath. All of us have sleep erections, but I’m not holding mine like the other two are. I look around to see if there are any more of me, even look out the window to see if maybe some of me are playing frisbee in the dark, but I don’t see any. We’re alone.
I don’t strike myself as particularly awake. I’m probably still sleeping, anyway. I wonder what happens if I take the plane from the floating Clayton, and then I stop wondering so I can do it. He doesn’t want to let go of it, but it’s kind of slippery and hard to hold onto with just one hand. This, as I will later come to think of it, is the machine. It’s open on both sides, open like a bag. I put my hand in it, and it doesn’t come out the other side. It’s the same when I flip it over, only that side stings. I think about putting my head in, and even though I’m pretty sure I’m still asleep, I don’t do it.
I wake up twice after that, and watching it happen is almost like being dead. The floating Clayton wakes first, rolling over and yawning. He opens his eyes and looks at me, standing next to the bed with the machine in my hands. He is unsurprised. Very likely he also thinks we’re dreaming, I don’t know. I can’t read his thoughts, or see through his eyes. I’m expecting him to fall, to land on the other of us, but this doesn’t happen. He floats toward me.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“What is that thing?” He points at the machine.
“I don’t know,” I say, “You had it when you were sleeping. I took it from you.”
“Oh.” He floats thoughtfully.
The sleeping Clayton groans and pulls the pillow from under his head. He turns onto his stomach and fastens the pillow over his ears.
“Hey,” Floating Clayton and I say.
“I’m having a dream,” he says, “And it’s not the best one I’ve had, but it’s better than being awake. Take what you want, my wallet’s on the bed stand.” Then he’s snoring again.
“You haven’t fallen yet,” I say. Floating Clayton shakes his head.
“Here,” I say, and look around the room. Near the open closet is a copy of The Journey Home, from the English class we failed our senior year. It’s a book I’ve never read. I pick it up and open it to the first page.
“Here,” I say, “Read.” Floating Clayton looks apprehensive, but shrugs. He leans forward.
“Too dark,” he says. “Let me hold the thing again.” I give him the machine and go to turn on the lights. We flinch at the brightness, and all of a sudden I don’t feel asleep anymore. I have to pee. I’m hungry.
“The branches were strewn above them like distorted mosaics of crucifixions, the hawthorn bushes blocking out the few isolated stars to ensnare them within a crooked universe of twigs and briars.” He sits back in the air and smiles at me. “Still up here,” he says.
“We’ve read in dreams before,” I say, “so maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yeah,” floating me says, “But we’ve never read that book. And if we haven’t read it, that means whatever I just read came from our subconscious. Which means we’re a genius.”
Maybe that’s when I know we won’t wake up again, that we’re as awake as we get. Floating Clayton probably knows too, or wants to believe he knows, because he’s the floating one. I envy him.
“I have to pee,” we say. The sleeping Clayton groans again. We ignore him. “You first,” I say, “you’re floating.”
“Okay.” He floats to the bathroom. From beside the bed I can hear him cursing, and imagine I should have gone first. Peeing with an erection is already hard enough, and to couple that with levitation must make for a frustrating game of spurts and wet walls.
I decide to wake me up. “Hey,” I say, “I’m not a robber and I’m not leaving. You’re me and we’re both here. One of us is floating and we’re not asleep.” The methodical rhythmic way in which I say this makes him groan again, but then he is looking at me.
“Why the hell is the light on?”
“I turned it on.”
“I wouldn’t have turned it on. You’re not me. Leave me alone.” He closes his eyes. “Why the fuck would I dream of waking up and wanting to go back to sleep? Stupid.
The floating Clayton comes back. I don’t hear him, because he doesn’t have to walk. He looks embarrassed. “I used the shower,” he says. “I’m sorry about the rest of it, but I can’t get low enough to clean anything. I can’t float up or down.” I feel bad for him.
“Here,” I say, and give him my hand. I pull, but he stays where he is. Pretty soon I’m hanging from his arm, but he doesn’t so much as dip.
“Stop it,” he says, “that hurts like nobody’s business.”
I stop. “Sorry.”
He shrugs. I walk to the bathroom. It’s wet. I try to use the toilet, but I can’t aim it right, so I use the shower too. When I get back, floating Clayton is over the bed, wrestling the pillow from the other one.
“Fuck off, man!” Floating Clayton lets go of the pillow. “Sorry. It’s just…” He pulls back and slaps me, the one in the bed, in the face. “It’s just that I’m NOT a fucking DREAM!”
Okay?
Maybe that’s how it started. I wasn’t there, not directly. Three of me were. The machine makes everything work differently. I don’t have memories of it, but it’s what comes out whenever I try to write down what happened. So it’s probably true.
Another one of me came out of the machine two hours after that. Maybe that one was me, but probably not. It doesn’t matter. Let’s say it was me.
I’m falling, like in a dream where I had to read something. Only, I fall sideways, out of a hole that another one of me is holding onto, into my room. Three of me are standing there, arguing, and my head is bleeding. One of me is floating, and all of them stop arguing and look at me.
“What the fuck?” we all say, and then, because we all said it, we laugh.
It must have happened just that way. And before you start thinking that the machine was just a me-maker, you should know that before the day was out, it had sent through four copies of my future wife, three pairs of my future children, all at different ages, and a man who says he’s me at seventy. This last was most interesting to us, especially the floating one, because seventy-year-old Clayton also floated.
He did it quietly, in the corner, and watched the rest of us with wet eyes.
Frank’s All-Night Eatery is actually a stand-in for a truck-stop that serves really terrible pies. I’m here again tonight. There’s half a piece of some wicked custard sitting in front of me, and it’s almost five in the morning. Frank and I are the only ones in the place. He notices I’m not eating for about the tenth time, and decides this time he’s going to mouth up.
“Not hungry this morning?”
“You know what I want, Frank?”
“Not in the mood for pie, then? I got a muffin or two wrapped up in the back. Wasn’t going to bring ‘em out till later on, but if you aren’t feeling that pie I can set you up.”
“What I want, Frank, is for a lady to come walking through that door and come sit down right by me. She’ll be kinda shy, look at me like
I’m more than just another animal. Don’t even have to be pretty. I’ll play it real slow, like I don’t know she didn’t pick any other spot in the whole place. We’ll get to talking and it’ll be the first real conversation I’ve had with a woman in more than a decade. Maybe nothing happens, probably she leaves and I never see her again. But that’s okay, because I already have my reason.”
Frank looks amused. “You picked the wrong time to hope for that, bucko. It’s damn near sunrise. Don’t know many girls stay up this early. Come back later, around two. We get some women in here drive truck. Always interesting talk.”
I shake my head. He doesn’t get it.
“Sure would be nice, though. Grant you that. Why’ncha eat your pie and I’ll get you one of them muffins on me. You can imagine it’s a lady.”
“I’ve eaten the last pie I’m going to eat. Would have been nice to go out on a winner, but I guess it doesn’t matter much. My father used to tell me it all ends up in the same place, and he was right. I’m going there too.”
Frank was emptying the register, something he always did at five. “No muffin?”
“Eaten my last one of those, too.”
Maybe then he got it. He stopped doing what he was doing, and looked at me hard. Cocked his head. “You ain’t talking about…what I think you’re talking about.”
“You mean killing myself? Ending my life? Suicide? Those are it.”
“You can’t do that. You don’t got it so bad. Plenty of things to live for, even if there isn’t a girl coming in here. Besides, you’re one of my best customers.”
“Frank, where am I from?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Where did I grow up? Go to school? Who was my first love, my first wife? My kids? Why don’t they want me in their lives? Why are my parents dead? Don’t give me some stock line about things to live for. If you knew me, you wouldn’t have said it.”
He looks down.
“Listen, it’s okay. It’s just the way things are. You’ve been there. I could have talked to you if I wanted to. Here.” I pulled out my wallet. “How much for the pie?” He waved his hand, and I could see there were tears in his eyes. I thought there might be some in mine too, but it seemed I’d already done that for the last time too. I pulled all the money out of my wallet and put it on the bar. I put the wallet beside it.
“You can give that to the police. Tell them I walked to the reser-voir.”
I get up. When I get to the door, Frank tries to say something. I wait for him to get it out.
“Why did you tell me this?”
“Had to say goodbye. To somebody.”
Chilled afternoon, gray like the sky and the falling rain. People wrapped in newspaper go by half-sprinting, and others scuffle along huddled beneath large umbrellas. Maureen, the hairstylist, is as gray as the day. Her pale blonde hair is matted against the sides of her face, and she slumps against the faded red brick walls of the building’s back porch. A cigarette smolders in her grim-lipped mouth, and sizzles each time a droplet finds the cherry, threatening to go out. Maureen does not seem to notice - her eyes are floating in their sockets, lacking focus, idly staring at nothing whatsoever.
Maureen had not moved for some time. Already her clothes were soaking through, and perhaps even if it began to hail she would remain, with her dying cigarette and her far-off eyes, oblivious. The door to the back porch opens.
“Your smoke break was finished with ten minutes ago!”
Maureen starts, and through the everywhere curtain of water sees her boss, Trinka, hands on hips and eyes narrowed.
“You’re soaked, Maureen! And we have customers to deal with! Inside, inside!”
The wet hairstylist nods and flicks her cigarette, turning wordlessly to the door and stepping inside.
“Get yourself cleaned up now, I can’t have you cutting hair like this. Use the bathroom.”
Maureen nods again, and moves toward the bathroom.
“Not there, not there, can’t you see that’s my only good rug? Go around!” Maureen looks to the back door and twitches, as if she means to run for it, but after a moment her eyes stop darting and she steps aside, tottering along on the linoleum instead. She reaches the bathroom door and steps over the rug, sighing.
“Clean up all the water on the floor, too. And don’t be long in there, Maureen, I’m not paying you to mope around. What’s the matter with you, anyhow?”
In the doorway, Maureen turns. “My husband. Left me for another woman. Monday.” But Trinka hadn’t waited around for an answer, had waddled back into the showroom and Maureen hears her addressing a customer. Her voice is high, tittering with too much zeal.
Maureen towels her hair, wrings her clothes. Another ten minutes and she is holding an old woman’s dark hair in her hands, shearing it slowly and without much precision. It is clear that her mind is somewhere else.
“Girl, I have somewhere to be in twenty minutes,” the old woman says, clicking her tongue. Maureen’s eyes refocus, and her snips quicken. “I’m sorry. I must be a little off today.”
“Got something on your mind, have you?”
“Hmm? Yes, I suppose I do. My husband left me for another woman. Can you believe? Just this Monday.”
The old woman blinks, and sniffs, adjusting herself in the seat as she rolls her head further back. “Oh. Well, you’ll get over it. Happens to everyone.”
“I got home from work and all of his things were just-”
“You know, I think I might want highlights. All of the younger women are doing that nowadays. I could look decades younger.”
Maureen’s car idles in front of her home. She glances at it. Too empty, she thinks, and makes a decision. Her friend Rita, a sorority mate from university. She lives in the city, and Maureen will visit. Drop by anytime, hadn't she said that? Yes, Maureen thinks so. Rita will listen, will understand. This, or the absence of her husband in the house they had bought together. Maureen dashes inside to write down the address and is off again just as soon.
The door opens and Rita is standing there with her mouth shaped like a Q and with eyes that don’t quite register what they see. She is wearing a black sequined dress and pearls around her neck, and her hair is poised above her head like a nest of serpents ready to uncoil.
“Oh. Dear Lord. Muh...Maureen? Is that you? Oh! I haven’t seen you in - well, since.” The woman clears her throat. “Come in, don’t stand out there. I’ve missed you, what’s the occasion?”
“I came by because. I needed a friend, I needed to not be alone. ”
“Oh? How unfortunate.”
“I was hoping we’d be able to talk.”
Rita clicks her tongue. “Ooh. It’s not the best of times. Peter and I were just getting ready to leave for a dinner party. I would invite you but, well, you just couldn’t show up looking like that. You’d have to change, and by then...”
Maureen looks around. There is a couch in the living room, but Rita had not asked her to sit.
“Oh, of course, Rita. I should have called. And thank you about the dinner party, but it’s best if I don’t go, anyway. I have things to do at home.” The thought of home chills her, the place is no longer one of love. “I’m sorry for intruding.” A man’s voice calls from the other room.
“Rita, I can’t find those cuff links you bought me, have you put them somewhere?”
A man walks through a hallway door. “Oh.”
“Peter, this is Maureen. One of my oldest friends. From college. Maureen, this is my husband.”
“Hello.” Maureen nods. Peter tips his head forward to look at her from behind the tops of his glasses. “Hello. You look...are you all right?”
“She’s fine, Peter, she just came to say hi. We don’t have time, I told her we’re on our way to a dinner party.”
Peter waves his hand. “Nonsense. You haven’t seen Maureen since college? Talk! The dinner party doesn’t start for another forty minutes anyhow. And between you and me,” he winks at Maureen, “If you knew about the dinner parties Rita has dragged me to you’d know how much I hate being early, or even on time.”
“But Peter,”
“Sit. Talk.” He smiles at Maureen and walks back into the bedroom. Rita regards Maureen politely and touches the ring of pearls around her neck. “So. Come into the kitchen. I don’t see why we can’t sit for a minute.”
“Okay.”
The kitchen table is wiped clean, an angelic pair of salt and pepper shakers smiling widely. Maureen looks at her lap. Rita licks her lip and Maureen thinks for the first time, Maybe I shouldn’t have come, I’m inconveniencing her. She doesn’t even want me here.
“My husband. He left me a note. Monday and he was gone, he took all of his clothes, his things. He said it was another woman, he said.” Her lips tremble but she does not cry. “He never said goodbye and he was my.” She doesn’t say it. “When I found him I was done looking. It’s not true, they say it’s not true, that love is a myth and it’s all just. But now that he’s gone it’s like he’s dead.”
Maureen looks to see the effect of her words, but sees none. Rita is drumming her fingers on the table.
“Monday. It happened Monday,” Maureen says. It is the only thing she knows for certain.
“Yes, well.” Another sigh from the other woman. “You know, my dear, it was bound to happen, of course. I was there when you were married, you remember. I told you then that he would never be able to stay faithful. That it was only a matter of time.” She leans in, whisper-ing, “And there is no changing the fact that he probably wished he had married someone more...well, Maureen, you were never the most beautiful girl in the room.”
”He wrote me a note. In the note it said he loved me.”
“Of course it did. Do you know why he left? Was there someone else? How was the sex? Men only know one thing. Was that it? If you can’t please your man in the bedroom, you can’t expect him to stay with you.”
Maureen’s throat closes up and she begins to wonder what she’ll do when she leaves here, when she finds herself back in her car, alone. “No, I....I suppose that might have been it.”
“There you are then. I wouldn’t be so upset about it, it was going to happen. You know that. You saw it coming, didn’t you?”
Maureen’s eyes close. She saw no such thing. She can’t think straight. “He was gone when I got home, he was gone and the note and he never said goodbye and I don’t know how I’m going to-”
“Yes, yes. It’s a bad situation.” Rita was standing up. “But I really must, I mean, Peter and I really must be going. The dinner party isn’t going to wait for us, you know.”
“Oh. Of course. Thank you for listening.”
Rita comes forth with a wide grin and an arm that wraps around Maureen’s shoulder like a snake. ”Of course, Maureen. You’ve always been a dear, dear friend.”
She’s ushered to the door. “Thanks again,” she says, as the door shuts. From inside, she hears, “Peter!”
In the car on the way home Maureen tries not to think. Being alone is even worse at this point than being told to consider the poss-ibility that it was her fault her husband had left her. It hadn’t been, had it? She had loved him as hard as she’d been able. Still did, in fact. If she gets home and he is there waiting for her, asking for forgiveness she'll give it. Even if he isn't asking for it. She’ll even vow to never throw it in his face during an argument. The thought spurs her on, drives her foot into the gas pedal as her car speeds up. The night air whistles past the tiny crack in her driver’s side window and she turns up the radio, the drone of some call-in advice show filling her ears but not her head. Her head is filled with thoughts of her husband. He is home. She can feel it. He'll be there, waiting for her. His car parked on the road. It is almost certainty at this point, and she can’t bear to think how she will feel if she is wrong.
The spot is empty.
At work the next day her eyes are hot and red from lost sleep. She cuts hair, and she can see in their faces that she’s not there; that she’s not human to them. Just a necessary thing. A cashier at the head of a check-out lane. But she keeps catching her mouth opening, her words spilling out. “My husband.” She needs to talk - it is like her need to drink, or urinate. It will soon be four days since her husband left her and she still has not talked about it properly. She ought to mention how he had whispered in the dark that he couldn’t believe he’d gotten so lucky, and how she’d been unable to stop smiling, even when he couldn’t see. She ought to say just what the letter had said, word for word, and how she’d fallen to the ground clutching her heart, screaming for him in case it had been some sick joke. Her listener would hold her hand, sigh and nod in all the right places. Maureen would tell, and her listener’s eyes would grow dark and tearful, and she’d hear how sorry they were.
Two more customers come in, and Maureen’s hand is itching for a cigarette. Then she notices one of them, a man.
“Maureen. Hello. You remember me from yesterday, don’t you?”
”Peter. Yes.”
He climbs into her chair and smiles at her. “Guess today was my day for a haircut.” Then, furrowing his brow, “Are you all right? You look terrible.”
She giggles. “I’m going insane. My husband left me. I can’t-”
”Your husband left you?” he takes her hand. “How horrible.”
She closes her eyes and can feel it coming, a waterfall of sorrow, dropping words onto her tongue. “I don’t want to be a bother. It was Monday.”
“No, no. I want to hear.” He looks into her eyes and Maureen is dizzy with relief.
Peter's face is a mask of concern. He sits, waiting.
Maureen is carried away and tells him everything.
The old man sat on the porch of the old house and rocked in his chair. One of the townspeople strolled by, a teenage boy named Bobby Steepleton that Arthur happened to recognize. Bobby had with him a bat and a glove, and glanced in Arthur's direction as he passed. On his way to the big game against the Richmond boys, who were supposedly bigger and better and...well, Bobby's shoulders were slumped and he didn't wave. But then, no one ever waved. The people of Mesmerson County couldn't see him. The girl scouts passed Arthur by, as did the mailman, and only once in a while would the Keatons' dog wander into his yard and look around, confused, before leaving again. The only real visitor he had anymore was Oscar.
Oscar was just as old, and maybe older, than Arthur. Outwardly, he liked to pretend he had a limp. His eyes were milked over to make people think he was blind and a mischievous grin usually spread itself over his wrinkled dark brown skin. He was no more an old black man than Arthur was an old white one, but the parts they played had become routine. Like their visits, their conversation, and the cane. Oscar would arrive unannounced, usually with a paper bag to drink from and a new cane. When he left, he'd most often leave the cane. Arther would hang it on the coat rack just inside the door like always, and in a day or two the cane would be gone.
About a minute after the Steepleton boy walked past, Oscar hobbled through the front gate and grinned up at him. Arthur nodded.
The cane was made of bamboo this time, with a grip made of tightly-wound reeds. Oscar tapped it up the steps of the porch and leaned it against the house and began to sit. The chair that made itself beneath him was a white wicker rocker, and the old black man let out a sigh that matched his age as his body folded into it.
“I hear there's a big game today.”
Arthur grunted. “Richmond. For the Valley Championship. Our boys are nervous.”
“How does it turn out?”
“Wouldn't you rather wait and see?”
Oscar raised an eyebrow. Arthur sighed, nodding.
“Gonna be close. We'll be down a couple runs, right up to the end, but we pull through. Last at-bat.”
Oscar snorted. He took a swig from his paper bag and gave Arthur a toothy grin. “That the best you can do, old man? Give them a walk-off win? Gee, ain't you a fun guy. So exciting. When you ever gonna mess things up? Throw the Mesmies for a loop?”
“You think they should lose?”
“It would be a start, way things go around here. Always looking bad before turning out okay. Your style is getting old.”
Arthur chewed at his bottom lip and thought. He was getting old.
“I mean, when's the last time you gave anyone cancer? Called up a car crash? Authored a killing in the heat of passion? Hell, when was the last time you made a tornado? Thunderstorm even? You let them off easy every time.”
“Can't help it, Oscar. I only think of the good things. Optimistic, I guess.”
“Not realistic, my man. None of it.”
Arthur shrugged. Bluebirds chirped and a warm breeze played through the willows. From next door, the smell of lilacs made it to him, along with the aroma of the sun-drenched strawberries in the patch across the street. There was nothing he loved more than summer, with its lazy days and its little dramas. Its games. Baseball, now there was a game.
Oscar had grown restless beside him. “Hey, hey,” he whispered, like he had a secret, “Old lady Henderson up the road is cooking a pie. Let's say when she goes to pull it out, she slips on the linoleum and goes headfirst into the thing. Roasts herself. Freak accident. Think about that for a minute.”
Arthur looked at Oscar out of the corner of his eye. “I like old lady Henderson. She's a fine lady. What happens instead is that she's for-gotten to set the timer. In an hour or so, she remembers that she's forgotten and panics, thinking she must have burned it. But it's fine, it's not burned at all. What's more, it's the best pie she's made in months.”
Oscar sat back. “You really are the most boring keeper I've ever run into. Most of those I can at least persuade.” There was amusement in his voice, like there always was, but there was something else too. Arthur thought it was disgust.
“I'm consistent. Not boring. And you can't tell me to think about something and have it happen. Doesn't work that way."
Oscar sighed. “Never hurts to try. Been workin' on you for more than a century now. You don't remember them old days, when we had some fun?”
Arthur did.
“That sort of thing doesn't do it for me anymore. You go anywhere else, any other county, and find chaos. Things happening without reason. Left up to chance. I like Mesmerson - I like that it's different than other places. It's better. I don't understand why you keep coming back, Oscar. It's not as if I let you work your mischief here.”
The old black man waved his hand. “Been everywhere else. Only place left to mess with is this place, and you got a grip on it. I respect that, you know. Keeps things interesting, having limitations.”
“Still, you tell me I'm boring.”
Oscar shrugged and drank some more. “The way you run this place is. You, I've liked you ever since I met you.”
Up the road, at the ball diamond, the Mesmerson boys had taken the field. The umpire had just finished brushing off home plate and had signaled for the game to start. Though they couldn't see the field, or hear the umpire's throaty “Play Ball!” it wouldn't be a problem. Not for Arthur and Oscar.
“The game's about to start,” Arthur said.
“About time. Those boys in the red outfits, batting first - which are those?”
“Richmond.”
Arthur thought about it. The Richmond boys were fiendish baseball players, and their coach was the type who pounded winning at all costs into them with such force that nothing else ended up mattering. As a result, the Richmond boys never seemed to lose. The Mesmerson team, who Arthur had watched every year since they'd started competing in the area little league tournament, did just as well, but always with a scrappy tenacity that gave them wins with close plays and clutch hits. It was strange to see, and even the Mesmerson coach didn't quite understand it - none of the kids on the team ever seemed to hit over .300, and the pitching always hovered around average. This was all Arthur's doing, of course. Winning was good for the kids and good for the town. Some of the older folks had even started down to the park on weekends to watch the games and cheer on the boys. It was good to see.
The Richmond boys scored twice before the first out came, a strikeout, which was followed by a walk and a ground-out double play.
“Don't think about those Richmond boys, Arthur.” It came as a casual remark, but its tone was serious. Arthur looked sidelong at his companion.
“What? What are you on about, Oscar? I'm not thinking about them - they're doing it all themselves.”
“Just don't, that's all I'm saying.”
Arthur bit his lip. He started to think about the Richmond boys. Their cleanup hitter was a tall muscular boy named Howard Wendelmann. There was a rumor going around that he was fourteen, and therefore too old to be playing. He was also their pitcher, and he threw the ball at seventy miles an hour. The first two batters struck out on three swings each, and walked away shaking their heads. Batting third was Bobby Steepleton.
“Don't think about that Wendelmann boy, Arthur.”
Arthur thought about him. The boy was fourteen. He was also the recipient of a generous crop of facial hair which his coach made him shave away every day. And the coach, the coach knew Howard's age and still played him. Arthur didn't get angry much anymore these days, but he was a slight bit annoyed, and so he thought about Howard Wendel-mann and the fourteen-year-old boy's next pitch.
Bobby Steepleton put it out of the park. The crowd went wild, and even down the road they could hear echoes of the roar. Arthur smiled a bit.
“You thought about him, didn't you? Even though I told you not to.”
“Couldn't help it.”
Arthur didn't see it but it was Oscar's turn to smile. He took an excited gulp of whatever was in his paper bag and licked his lips. Arthur thought about the Wendelmann boy again, and was satisfied to know that the shot had shaken him. His confidence was decimated, partly because of the home run but mostly because of the pitch. It was supposed to be a fastball but had ended up a fifty mile-per-hour floater. Right down the pipe. He walked the next batter before getting the last out on a line drive headed right for his face, snow-coning it in his glove just inches from his right eye. Arthur frowned a little – he hadn't meant for that to happen, not really. That was too close. Wendelmann hadn't been hurt, but still... He supposed he was getting a little too excited. He sat back in his rocking chair and took a deep breath, filtering the sweet summer air through the hair in his nostrils. Oscar sat beside him, dark fingers bridged, thumbs resting on his lower lip. The cane lay forgotten against the side of the house.
The game went on, Arthur orchestrating bits of it, and finally it was the bottom of the seventh inning, with the Richmond boys up by two. The final half-inning. The first two Mesmerson batters walked, and the Wendelmann boy was tired and nervous. His pitches had been erratic, and every time he thought he'd gotten his control back something odd had happened. A slow pitch, a pitch way outside, some that looked as if they might hit batters. He couldn't figure it. The Richmond coach was upset, and Arthur could feel that he was worried about losing. Not this game, the coach thought, not this game.
The next batter struck out, but on a pitch in the dirt so the two runners moved up to second and third base.
Oscar grinned. “Was that you or him?”
“Him.” Arthur smiled.
“Listen, Arthur,” Oscar said, leaning forward and putting a hand on the other man's knee, “This is important. You can't think about any of the Richmond boys. Don't do it. Not the third baseman, the shortstop, the second baseman, the fat first baseman, or any of the outfielders. Don't think about that Wendelmann boy or the coach.” Then, as if realizing he hadn't done his math right, Oscar added, “Don't think about the catcher either.”
“Why not?” Arthur asked.
“Just don't.”
The next pitch was to Steepleton, who socked a blooper up the middle, right over the second-baseman's head. The Mesmerson third base coach was waving his arms and the boy on second base was rounding third base and going home. Arthur was, of course, thinking about each of the players on the Richmond team. Nothing specific, but the stage had been set.
“Don't think about any of the Richmond boys, and whatever you do, Arthur, don't think about any of their heads exploding.”
Arthur's mouth dropped open, and so did Oscar's, into the widest grin he'd ever made.
Steepleton's single would have been an in-the-park home run to win the game, but he just stopped between first and second and began screaming.
Cliifford told people he was a magician. That he’d been one ever since the moment he was born, when he’d sawed himself in half.
The story went like this.
His mothers were conjoined twins. They half-shared a uterus, or rather, shared a uterus that halved halfway down, split like the cloven trunk of a tree. Each woman had a vagina of her own, and when Clifford was conceived (which, he likes to say, was a whole separate magic trick) the little embryo he became attached itself to and grew on the very place the two sisters became one, on the very precipice of their Siamese misfortune.
On a particular night, and it was a Thursday, Clifford got this far into his monologue without anyone in the audience so much as gasping. He supposed that having two mothers was becoming some kind of social norm, and that was all right. It always bothered him when they reacted too early. When they reached for a polite applause or sympathetic ooh. So far, everyone in the audience kept silent. That was good. Because here was the trick.
“I grew there,” he said, “a fragile egg, to the size of a pear. Then to a gourd, a pumpkin. Okay, not a very big pumpkin.” No canned or polite laughter.
“Finally I was due to arrive. A child of conjunction. And here I came, but from which mother? Which would bear me, birth me, send me into the world wet and screaming? The doctors didn’t know either - there was one on each side, holding each of my mothers open, waiting for me to slide down. That was when they discovered I was twins, that one of me was coming headfirst and one of me breach, and out came the instruments, one cold metal grabbing spoon for each of us, pulling.”
“Out we came, but again the doctors were surprised. The nurses were so bewildered one of them fainted and the other one puked on her. From the right mother, my head, my chest, my arms. From the left, my legs, my torso. I shot blood at them, posing. Ta-da.”
Clifford stripped, dropping clothes in piles at his feet. It was a change he’d timed, improved, perfected. Before anyone had a chance to look away he was naked in front of them, deep purple scars running like train tracks across him just where they’d expect, where he’d been stitched and sewn back together so hastily. His spine curled in on itself in a Q, and now he heard the gasps, the cries. Now he heard the same hurking noises the nurse, and every nurse after her had made.
Clifford told people he was a magician, but his only trick was this. On a Thursday, this particular day, he threw his arms in the air and yelled.
“Ta-da!”
“So you’re here because you’re having too much sex.”
The kid is twenty-four. Dr. Werner is forty, and slightly overweight. She is frowning. The kid is having a hard time looking at her. He’s wearing a t-shirt with a drawing of Florida. Under the drawing, it says “I’m no island, but you’re going to love my peninsula.”
“I just need some kind of…like, can you give me a pill that’ll make it stop happening?”
“To stop the sex from happening?”
“Yeah. I don’t have any control over it.”
“You mean, you can’t stop yourself? Like a compulsion?”
He looks confused. “Not…not really. More like, it happens, and I don’t want it to.”
Dr. Werner looks concerned. “Are you being raped? Forced to have
sex?”
The kid looks confused again. “In my dream? No. I’m just there, having sex. No one’s forcing me.”
“In your dream?”
“Yeah. That’s why I want the pills.”
Dr. Werner lowers her head. She sighs. “It was my understanding we were talking about your actual behavior. You made an appointment with me, and told me it was about a sexual addiction.”
“It is. My subconscious is addicted to sex. Sorry, I don’t know a lot about this kind of thing. I thought you guys were interested in dreams.”
“Sometimes we are. But we don’t assume the problems our patients come to us with are dream problems.”
“Oh.”
“Let’s start over. You’re having dreams about sex, and you want them to stop.”
“Yeah. It’s like, every time I go to sleep. And they’re really real. So then, when I wake up, I spend all my time during the day thinking about them. I can’t get anything done.”
“I see. How active are you, sexually? When’s the last time you’ve had actual sex? Or masturbated? Maybe you just need a release.”
“I…” the kid looks down. “I can’t ever…I don’t get erections. I don’t think I’ve had an orgasm.”
“What about when you wake up from these dreams? Do you have erections then?”
“Not really. Sometimes, halfway. But it’s not like the dreams are particularly arousing.”
“The sex dreams aren’t arousing?
“Well, it’s always some girl I’d never be attracted to. My fat cousin. Girls from school who ate at the last table in the lunchroom. Last night I dreamed about my fourth grade teacher. She looked kind of like you.”
“Hmm.”
“Can you help me? Prescribe me something?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m a psychologist.”
The man who sat down across from Eddie Carter with eleven minutes to go was very obviously not his girlfriend.
“Anna’s gonna be running a little late, Eddo,” he said, straightening his coat. “She had some trouble picking out the right shoes and all the taxis were filled up. She’d call you, but she left her phone back in the room and she’s pretty sure that if she goes back to get it, she’ll miss all the empty taxis and by the time she gets back they’ll be full again.” He looked around, nodding. “This is a nice restaurant. Very forties art deco.”
Eddie narrowed his eyes. “Did she send you ahead to tell me?”
“No, I just know. Sort of my thing, knowing things, you know? Like how I know you’re Edward James Carter, and you were born in Murraysville, Pennsylvania, and growing up you had a best friend
named Pete who fell off a grain tower and died while you watched, and how you didn’t start hitting puberty till you were fourteen and you had this secret irrational fear that you were turning into a girl.”
Eddie’s face went pale.
“Listen, man. Mister. Whatever. I don’t know who you are, or what you’re about, but I don’t like being blackmailed. It’s never happened to me before, but if that’s what you’re doing, I don’t like it.”
The stranger spread his hands affably in front of him.
“No, not at all! You’ve got it wrong. I like you. I’m just telling you these things so that when I tell you the world is going to end in ten minutes you’ll believe me.”
“The world is going to end.”
“Yeah, this one at least.” He looked at his wrist. There was no watch there. “Well, nine minutes now.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You’re going to propose tonight. You’re touching the engagement ring you got her. In your pocket. From Zales.”
The incredulous smile dropped off Eddie’s face. Of course he was. The most beautiful diamond ring he’d been able to find. All for her. And for a minute all he did was stare at the stranger. The man looked normal enough, slight facial hair covering high cheekbones and eyes that had seen a lot. He thought, I still don't believe you, but what he said was different.
“How does it end? Nuclear?”
“Nah, it ends like no way you’ve ever been told it would. Like a magic trick. There you see it, there you don’t. Only, you don’t actually get to see it after it's gone, because you go with it. I'll see it, but there’s only one of me.”
“You’re going to watch the world end.”
“Done it before. Hundreds of times. A world a day, sometimes. Today it’s yours. Nice enough, when you look around. It would be a nice one to go out in.” He leaned in, giving Eddie a believe-you-me kind of look, “There were some others, Eddo, that were begging to be put down. Horrible places.”
“Uh huh. So, you’re telling me this because I can do something about it?”
“No, no. See, I’m like the foreman on a demolition job. I come in and see that everything is in order, everything’s set to go. All paperwork, really.”
“Oh, right. So why tell anyone? I mean, if nothing can be done -” “Well, I can’t save the place, but I can do something for someone.”
The words hung in the air, and someone near them started tapping a glass as they offered up a toast.
“You want to save me.”
The stranger edged in closer. From here, Eddie saw the toll time had taken on him. This man was deceptively old.
“Listen, I can tell you still don’t really believe me. And that’s all right. It’s important for you to keep the hope, otherwise you’d be a miserable puddle of despair right now, and neither of us wants that. What I’m trying to do here is offer you a chance to stay alive. You would replace me, do what I do. You don’t have to go down with the ship, and heck, you can stay around as long as you like. See a whole lot of interesting things, and I can finally get some rest.”
“How much time is left now?”
“Six minutes.”
“And until Anna gets here?”
“Three minutes.”
“Is there any way you can, I don’t know, show me?”
The man sighed and looked around the restaurant. “If that’s really how you want to play this, I can do that. But I’m only going to show you a taste, because I don’t want you to go into a seizure and make all these nice people choke on their food. You still want it?”
Eddie nodded and licked his lips. He was nervous, and a moment later when the man reached across the table and put a palm to his temple, he was nothing.
Light and dark, up and down, negative and positive, infinitesimal and infinite, none of those comparisons meant anything anymore. Eddie saw through someone else’s eyes a place that wasn't a place at all, but rather, the absence of one. It hurt to look at, but at the same time it was the most wonderful thing. Unimaginable. The closest sensation he could compare it to was staring up into the sky from the bottom of a pool, and even that was way off. A split-second might have gone by, or a hundred thousand years. Time didn’t exist when nothing could experience its passing.
And then Eddie was back in the restaurant, and there were only five minutes to go.
“Holy God.” He’d been convinced.
The man across from him gave him a knowing nod. “That was be-tween the last world and here. But it’s like that every time. I’m going to need an answer, Eddo.”
Eddie closed his eyes and thought. The world was ending and here he was being offered an escape hatch. How many people would ever get this chance? He could be a true world traveler, see things the man in front of him hadn't even dreamed of...but he’d have to watch each of them wink out of existence, and he’d have to do it alone. It was a sad thought, and for the first time Eddie looked at the stranger with veiled pity. Then there was Anna. If he left, she would die alone, wondering where he’d gone, with no one but a stranger to greet her as it all fell away. He didn’t think he could let that happen. In the end, Eddie only asked one question.
“How many other people before me have you asked to take it on? Your job?”
The stranger closed his eyes and smiled, as if he’d been expecting the question. “Tens, hundreds. I haven’t kept count.”
Eddie nodded. “I’m sorry, mister, but my answer-”
“-Is the same as theirs. Yeah. You know, I knew you wouldn’t do it.” The stranger got up, and wiped at the lapels of his coat. Eddie thought he saw a tear roll out of one of the deep eyes, but it was just as quickly gone.
“I’m sorry.”
The stranger looked at him wistfully, then past him.
“Eternal life just ain’t the promise it used to be. But I’ll survive.” He turned to go, then turned back. “It’s only a matter of time, you know. You’ve got three minutes, and she’s getting out of the cab right now. Make it count, Eddo.”
“Yes. Uh. Thank you.”
The stranger smiled and walked down the aisle, past the maitre’d, and out the front door. Barely a moment passed before Anna walked in, long locks of curly red hair falling over a forest green dress. She was magnificent. Eddie saw her searching for him, head darting left and right as she did it. He grinned, because at that moment he knew why he’d chosen to stay. Finally spotting him, her own face opened up into a smile, one of relief and comfort. She hurried over to his table, and slid into the space which had been occupied by the stranger only a moment before.
“Sorry I’m late, Eddie, I -”
“They look lovely, Anna.”
He was pointing at her shoes. They were dark brown, high heels with golden bows on each toe. She gave him a puzzled look. “What? Oh, yeah. You know, it was these darned shoes, that’s why I was-”
Before she could finish, Eddie was out of his seat and kneeling beside her.
“Anna Moss, I’ve waited my entire life for this moment. And now that it’s here...well, there’s just not enough time for me to say what I wanted to. Will you marry me?”
Her lips were trembling. She covered them with her hands, and her eyes were wet and shining. “Oh, Eddie. Yes, I’d love to.” He slid the ring from his pocket onto her finger and brought her into his arms. He put his lips to her ear. “If it’s you or forever, I’ll always choose you,” and though she didn’t know what he knew, Eddie was sure she could feel what he meant. She kissed him.
And like that, his lips on hers, their world ended.
The stranger watched it go, shoulders slumped, and let out a big sigh. He might have been crying, but when he turned away and began the walk between worlds, a grin began to tug at the corners of his mouth.
Where Eddie Carter’s world used to be, there remained only a
memory, and a rising wave of wondrous, perfect laughter.
There is a story I want to tell you about a man I knew once.
Something happened to him, and his name was Clayton. Never mind who I am for a minute, this is about him. You know those stories people tell at parties? Fancy parties, where all the guests are wearing ties? The story, it’s always practiced. Embellished. Repeated. Every party the same story. The same guy, the same little group of people gathered around thinking they’re hearing something new, that somehow they’re special.
This story is like that. Except I’m only going to tell it once, and it’s true.
It goes like this. Clayton got married to a nice girl. A beautiful girl. Blonde, tall, great smile. I was there, I danced at the reception with some brunette. If women were silverware my date would have been a real spoon. I gave a mediocre toast. For a present I got them a mixer, one of those big bowls with the spinning claw up top. I think it doubled as a bread maker, maybe. They never used it.
On their honeymoon they go somewhere different. The Bahamas, Hawaii, Paris - nope. The fucking Grand Canyon. They flew. Southwest from Detroit, got off in Phoenix. Rented a car. Drove out to some tourist hotel by the South Rim of the Canyon. I know which hotel, but I’m going to stop for a second to explain something important.
I know what happened out there, even though I’ve never been to Arizona. Never been west of the Mississippi, and only ever drove through Canada. So everything I know about the Grand Canyon is stuff I’ve seen on TV or read in books. Maybe Arizona is all desert, I don’t know. I don’t know a whole lot, and the little I do know I didn’t learn until a long time after the accident. After the funeral, I tried to get Clayton on the phone, to talk to him about it. I sent him e-mails, letters. I did what I could do, but he didn’t want anything to do with me. I gave up. I had done my grieving, and I tried to move on with my life and figured he was doing the same. All of us knew there was no one to blame.
Then one day I get a phone call, and it’s not from him, it’s from his mother. He’s gone missing. A strange development, but not altogether surprising or particularly distressing. I tell her he probably just went off to think. She tells me she’s had the police looking for him for three days. It's the second call I get from her that winter – the first one was about Imogene. Clayton's mother got the news before my parents.
When I get off the phone I go and sit on my porch. It’s February, and we’re having sort of a warm spell. All the icicles on my gutter are dripping and I’m thinking about the time Clayton and I drove to Mount Pleasant to play in a poker tournament. I went out the first round and Clayton sat there with this grin on his face, knowing I couldn’t stand seeing him win because it meant I had nothing to do but order drinks until his chips were gone. We were twenty-three. On the way home at five in the morning he drove right over a deer carcass, and the stink came up through the air conditioner and stuck on us, stinging our eyes as we retched out open windows.
You know how when you watch TV sometimes and you’re talking to the guy next to you, or your wife or girlfriend, and all of a sudden someone on the TV says the exact same thing you or she just said? Or when you’re driving down the road and you start humming a song and then you put the radio on and that same song is playing? Sort of weirds you out? That’s how I feel when the UPS truck pulls up and a big thick woman with a man’s haircut gets out and hands me a package. I sign for it, noticing that it says on the slip that it’s from Clayton. Only I feel it twice as bad, because not only had I just been thinking about him, I just got off the phone with his mom. I don’t notice the big lady get in her truck or drive away, but she must, because the next time I look up the street is empty.
I put it in the chair next to me and don’t open it. After a few minutes it’s almost as if he’s there, sitting with me. That’s nice, except I also feel like he’s trying to tell me something and I’m making him wait just so I can pretend things are like they used to be. Not that I don’t want to know what’s in it, just that I’m scared whatever it is will mean he’s gone for good.
It’s a big red notebook. Spiral-bound with leather covers. Filled with eighty or ninety loose-leaf sheets of yellow notebook paper, like what comes off a legal pad. Maybe by then I’m starting to get cold. In February, even when it’s warm it’s not warm. I should go inside, I remember thinking, but I don’t. I sit there on my porch and read this notebook straight through, cover to cover. The first page I’ll never forget. Scrawled in red ink across the first two lines are the words, “Secret Notebook.” Under that, written even bigger, “The Truth.”
I’m telling you this for two reasons. One is, I believe what I read in the notebook. It made some sense, but for the most part it didn’t. That’s how I knew it was true. Two is, I’m the only one who’s ever read it, and after I did I burned it. Maybe that wasn’t the best idea, but I wasn’t thinking right. If I hadn’t, this story wouldn’t need a middleman. I’d just have you read the notebook. Everything I couldn’t have known, all of the details I’d never imagine, all of them come from the notebook. I thought you should know.
Enough of that. This story is about Clayton, and his wife. Her name, you might have guessed, was Imogene. When they were alone, he called her his Imogenery Friend. I always called her Genie.
When they arrived, they drove to a tourist resort called The Grand Hotel, the same name as that hotel up on Mackinac Island where they shot that Christopher Reeve time travel movie back in the eighties. The Grand Hotel is part of a mini-mall called “Grand Canyon Village” on Highway 64, just two miles from where the action is. It’s where they’d spent two nights together, and while they had reservations for three…well, things happen. This particular thing, in this particular place, happens on average two or three times a year. Usually it’s a kid whose parents are looking away for a moment to tie a shoe or take a drink.
Clayton didn’t see her fall.
Those first two nights were magic. The happiest my friend had been his whole life. Sure, it sounds like hyperbole. But when you’re twenty-six and feel like you’ve found and secured the love of your life, and hey, you get to see and touch her without clothes on too? Give me something that beats that and I’ll shut up right now. If I know Genie, she was plenty happy too, but I didn't get to hear it from her.
I don’t want to leave anything out, but it’s going to happen. Clayton wrote about the fireplace in the lobby, the obligatory Western-themed restaurant and adjacent saloon with a new band every night. Mostly he wrote about the bedroom, the dimples on either side of her spine just above her buttocks. The taste of her sweat and the way she clung to him like a monkey to its mother. The way she whispered his name and how her tongue slid into his ear when he was inside her. That the dirtiest thing she could think of to say was “Give me your baby,” and how that one remark had made him laugh to the point of jeopardizing their lovemaking altogether.
When she napped he sat in a chair by the window and watched her, the corners of his mouth upturned in the slightest way, thinking he’d never be this happy again and not knowing he was right.
The first night they walked to the movie theater a block away and saw Forrest Gump. Imogene got through it fine but Clayton cried at the end when Forrest visits the tree where Jenny’s buried. He was torn between trying to hide it and being proud of being moved by a film, so
he only dried the eye closest to his wife. When it finished he found she’d been watching him the whole time with a look of feigned concern.
The next day they got up early and went out on the trail with a group of tourists. They rubbed suntan lotion on each other and traded water bottles, because Clayton said it would be easier to remind her to drink than it would be for him to remember to do it for himself. She had a camera, one of those Nikons with big screw-on lenses from work (she was a Free Press photographer) and she wore out two whole rolls of film on the Canyon before sunset. She took plenty of Clayton too, but he never knew it. Imogene didn't want him to pretend happiness for a photograph - the pictures she took showed the real thing.
The next morning they took the Rim Trail by themselves, which was considered one of the more scenic and less dangerous of routes. Funny how things don't work like they're supposed to.
He was looking through the viewfinder. The sun was behind some clouds and then it came out, and he couldn't see her anymore – she had been replaced with a box full of glare. He had his other eye closed, and instead of pulling the thing off his face and resetting for the sun, he squeezed the shutter button.
“There.”
He let the camera drop around his neck and squinted at her. “Why don't I take another – Imogene?” He was squinting at an empty rock face. Mather Point, one of the most popular views of the canyon. This is where she wanted her photograph taken. He turned around. She'd doubled back so she could come up from behind and scare him, or she was hiding somewhere. But there was nowhere to hide. No Imogene doubling back anywhere. A knot started to tighten in his guts.
“Imogene?”
He inched forward. He wasn't sure why, she wasn't down there. No way she could have fallen - she hadn't made a noise. If she'd fallen she would have screamed, he would have heard it. He would have seen her. So why did he keep stepping forward, six inches at a time? And then, when he got to the edge, why couldn't he force himself to look down? Why was Clayton crying already?
He didn't remember spotting her, didn't remember vomiting, calling the police, or climbing down the four hundred feet himself. When they asked him later to describe the sequence of events he told them he had walked to the edge of the cliff and then he was beside her, with two broken ankles and blood all over him. They told him she'd been dead when he got there, that she'd died on impact, but that wasn't what he remembered.
Imogene smiled at him, and her good eye moved to meet his. The other side of her skull was caved in, and her neck was turned back like a broken pencil.
“I tried to joke,” she said to him, her words somehow clear. “I wanted to trick you into thinking I fell.”
“I know,” he said, “Don't talk,” he said, and “I love you.”
“I ruined all your plans.”
“Don't worry, beautiful. We'll just go home. We'll just go back and it'll all be just how it was. We don't have to have a honeymoon, okay? I don't need one.”
“Look at me,” she said, and he did. It hit him. He wanted to hit it back.
“No.”
Then there was a helicopter, and he was alone. Imogene wasn't smiling at him – she was dead.
The hospital staff left him alone, and he didn't talk to anyone. For two days he lay in bed, forcing himself to sleep, just so she could be alive again. It didn't matter that when he woke up he got so angry he tried to tear the casts off his legs. It was worth it, and he deserved the pain. His fault. His fault his fault his fault.
He flew back to Michigan with Imogene's body. At the funeral he sat and said nothing. He didn't cry. When I tried to catch his eye he looked away. My parents went over to talk to him and he turned his wheelchair around and rolled himself to his parents' car. He couldn't give anyone what they wanted, couldn't be an object of pity. Feeling was a luxury he didn't allow himself, unless that feeling was anger. His mother and father tried to get him to come back to live in the house of his childhood, but he swore at them. They dropped him off at his old apartment. It was stale and smelled like corn syrup. He thought he should start drinking, but didn't, because he didn't think it would matter.
The doorbell rang, the phone rang, and he didn't answer either. He didn't read or watch TV, and swore off personal hygiene altogether. He slept as much as he could and ate as little as possible, and in the few hours he was awake he wrote in a notebook all the things he should have said to her as she died. Then he made a list of the ways he could have saved her, and finally he wrote down all the most painful ways he could kill himself. That was what he wanted most. He even tried once, had one arm down the kitchen In-Sink-Erator to the elbow and the other on the switch, all ready to do it, when the phone rang. He didn't move to get it, but didn't want to bleed out without knowing what the message was going to be, so he waited.
It was the photo place. His mother had dropped off the camera and the rolls of film for him the other day, and the pictures had been developed. Would he like to come down and get them or should she call his mother and have her bring them to him?
He was curious. He called back, and for the first time in almost a month, made ready to leave the apartment. He showered and shaved, and when the photo lady handed him the stack of envelopes with a smile, he almost smiled back.
At home he spread them all on his bed, and spent a minute with each, poring over its details. He even smelled them, imagining he was with a part of her again, a part she'd made just for him, just for this moment. But the feeling soon passed. They were pictures. Just pictures of the Grand Canyon, like anyone else's. She wasn't in any of them.
That was almost true.
It was the very last picture in the bottom envelope, the one he'd taken even though he hadn't seen anything.
On her face was a look of exaggerated terror. Her left foot was raised and stepping back, and her arms were treading air as she pre-tended to struggle with her balance. Clayton stared at the photo for near an hour, fresh waves of despair wracking him. It was like falling in love again, and it was like being shot in the chest. He glued the other pictures to the ceiling above his bed and the picture of Imogene into the back of a red leather notebook. On the first page of the notebook he wrote, “Secret Notebook,” and under that, in bigger letters, “The Truth.”
“The truth is,” he wrote on the first page, “Some things we aren't meant to come back from,” and, on the last, “Mark, you deserved to know. I'm sorry. Tell my mom I'm okay.”
The day after I burn the notebook I call his mother back.
“What's the news?”
“They want to call it off.”
I close my eyes. When I open them, I'm looking at the picture of Imogene between my fingers. The only thing I saved, because I couldn't burn her.
On the phone, I say,“They'll find him. You'll see. Just wait, I'm sure he's fine,” but the words are hollow.
I'm holding the last picture anyone's ever taken of Genie, my little sister, in the last moment of her life before she plummets into the Grand Canyon. I can't look away.
On the phone, I say, “You'll see,” and “Just wait.”
Just wait.
I kind of don’t believe this is happening. I'm at the hospital downtown, the big one, I'm wearing a backless gown, and I'm sitting upright in my fourth waiting room of the day. I'm here instead of my job interview because my car wouldn’t take me anywhere else. Something urgent in my chart, or at least that’s what I’m guessing. I’m a little mad I missed my interview but I’m more scared of what I’m here for.
I feel fine but everyone is really not acting normal. After a few minutes alone during which I nervously bite the skin off my thumbs and forefingers and pick my toes, the door in front of me opens and I see a lot of bald, greasy heads and mops of blonde hair sprouting from white coats. It looks like one thing, one doctorganism. From the center of the mass a single doctor is ejected and she enters the examination room.
She pushes the door closed behind her, piling the other doctors up against each other in the hall. She turns to me, looking breathless and excited to talk to me.
"Hey, I'm Diane Rushdie, M.D."
"Hi."
"So, I read your chart. None of the others thought I should say anything, because what's the point, but I'm here to tell you there's something very wrong with you."
It isn’t the best start to a friendship, in my opinion.
"What is that?"
I’m thinking hey, big fella, you probably have cancer. Or some rare blood disease. You got some deadly thing and now she’ll tell you and you’ll have to divvy up the rest of your years or months and say your goodbyes and all that.
But she says, “In about ten minutes you're going to split apart, and a person who's been using you as a host body will emerge from your husk."
Which, obviously I’m not super expecting to hear. So I ask for clarification, and yeah, what she says still sounds a lot like what she just said.
"A different person is going to come out of you in about ten minutes and you'll just be a pile of flesh on the floor."
It’s pretty hard to take. “What the fuck?”
“Basically inside of you there's another person and he or she is going to be taking over the space you occupy in the universe and you'll be dead, in about ten minutes.”
This is a joke, I’ve decided, a real big joke. I’ve never heard of this disease before. Now, I guess academically I’m aware that there are probably thousands of diseases I have no idea exist, and a doctor probably has a slightly better idea about something like that, but a person having a condition where they open up like a pea pod and instead of organs and bones another person comes out? Right? I mean, this is a joke.
“Wait a minute,” I say, remembering something. I know her game. This is some candid camera show and I’ve got the proof.
“What?”
"You said your name was Rushdie, right?"
"Yeah, Diane Rushdie."
"And now you're rushing my death along. This is just some prank, isn't it?"
"Oh. Haha, yes, I could see how you would think that.” Rushdie laughs again. “Haha. Unfortunately, no, your death is very much going to happen very soon here. I have the chart that shows the parasite is only going to wait a few more minutes to bust from the casing that is you."
Let me pause here to interject while this is happening to me, that I happen to think laughing at a patient with a terminal illness is pretty rude, so there’s a part of me that at this point still pretty much believes it’s still possible this is all a joke. So I say, "And if I open the door and ask any one of those doctors out there what they think, they'll say the same thing you said?"
"Oh yes, we all discussed it,” doctor Rushdie says. “None of them wanted me to tell you.”
“Maybe they didn't want you to tell me because it's not true, what you’re saying is just some weird made up diagnosis and that's not something a real doctor would tell me?”
“Hmm, I hadn't thought of that. Why don't you open the door and ask one of them like you said?”
“Okay.” I stand up and I open the door a crack.
“Which of you have read my charts!”
The mass of doctors all raise their hands, nod, or say something in the affirmative of the fact they'd seen the machines had printed out on my chart.
"Is someone about to jump out of me?"
They all, in some form, look down and shuffle their feet. I close the door. I sigh. I turn around.
"So you're telling me, Dr. Rushdie, that I have an extremely incurable and imminent deadly disease; one that ends my life by spawning another not alive right now person, and I only have about eight minutes to live, is that right?”
The doctor holds up a hand, her thumb and forefinger together in a circle. So that’s it. I’m over.
I think of...
"You don't happen to have my family out there, ready to run through the door and say their goodbyes, do you?"
She shakes her head. "In fact, in cases like these most families choose to accept the new inner person as a part of their family. Sure they'll remember you, but there'll be someone else to take your place."
I start being unable to breathe.
"Is this…" I stammer, "Part of it?"
The doctor checks my breathing and my pulse.
"No," she says, "I think you are just really scared and angry. But think about it like this – the mourning period for your family will be extremely short."
"I don't care, I won't even get to see any of that!” I shout at her, “And the dude who comes out of me is probably going to be some douchebag!”
“All of the inner people I've ever met have been really polite, really good,” doctor Rushdie says.
"Yeah, well maybe mine will be a douchebag since it came from me and I’m not any good."
She pats my head.
"Listen, it's not your fault that this is happening to you. This doesn't happen to bad people or to good people: it just happens. And nobody knows why, or why the inner people always immediately claim personhood and seek asylum in the nearest church. How they always think to do that will never make sense to me. I suppose it’s a defense mechanism."
I realize I have no time. No time to eventually get to the dreams I’d had my entire life, no time to finally get around to directing a film, writing a book or even getting a good job and not living off my parents for once. I am six or seven minutes from the end. I decide even if it is a short amount of time, I don’t want to spend it here.
“What’s it like outside today?”
“It’s very cold.”
“Thanks. I’m gonna go now.”
I get up off the examining table, hearing the sweaty crinkle of the paper peeling from my butt for the last time. That particular sound I don’t think I’ll miss.
I open the door and squeeze into the hallway with the doctors.
“Dead and someone else in five minutes here, make way,” I say, and the sea of medical professionals parts. I run for the elevator.
The elevator down is slow. I think about looking at my hands, trying to take them in one last time, but thinking about what’s inside them just makes me sad. I want to look only at the numbers changing, which is still one of the worst ways to feel your life slip away. By the time I reach the ground floor (finally!) I probably only have a minute or two left.
Now I’m outside, running down the street, blue asbestos gown flapping behind me, bare ass out for every honking pervert. I’m going to die, and all that’s left is where. I pull the gown the rest of the way off, for speed, and lumber toward where I can see sunlight busting through tree cover.
I stop, gasping, and stumble into the circle of sunlight. My feet are numb. Goosebumps tickle every pore. I feel my mother’s touch on my face. My skin starts to itch, starts to boil. Cars swerve around me, and people shout out windows that I’ll get myself killed and to put on some damn pants.
I stare into the sun, and give birth.
“Excuse me,” came a voice from behind Carolyn as she walked on her way to return books to the library. She turned. It was a naked woman, covered in blood.
“Excuse me,” the woman said. “I am a person. I think I just killed someone. I’m looking for the nearest church. I’d like to seek asylum until things are figured out. Do you think you could point me there?”
Carolyn couldn’t, but she could scream, so she did that.
We are one of the first Oort to "step foot" on your planet, “stroll” through your cities. While your attempts at infrastructure are impressive, they also lay bare the limitations of your thought and externalized communication methods. Perhaps you don’t live long enough to approach a measure of potential. This is unfortunate for you, would almost be a shame - if we appreciated the concept of shame. That is what we would call a joke, had we words for it. Oort language is far more internal. We have the feeling of laughter, however to us many of the aspects of language are unnecessary - but we aren't trying to make you feel worse than you already do. To share existence with other living creatures is a phenomenon worthy of great respect, regardless of their differences.
We had so far decided against contact - we watch what you do to each other and that's the only warning we need - except some actions are decided outside of a directive. This is what happened in your case.
In Chicago it is not long before one of you is dead on the street. The light from your closest star has begun to wane, and we experienced you fleeing from another of you, and then witnessed your moment of practical termination as you fell, tumbling headfirst in the street. The cop points a metal tool at you. The tool and its purpose are death. Its thunder follows a tearing bite too industrial for flesh.
We scuttle up to the police officer and come into time, appearing behind him. We wrap our arms and our claws around him, as it tears into his skin. He struggles, he cries out. We pull him a half second out of time, where he exists in suspended animation. We can return for him and put him back into time but for now he is a neutralized entity. It is disconcerting to see a willingness in any being to destroy another - we are so rare among the stars. How to reward this blatant disregard for concurrent sentience? We don’t know yet.
Nobody else is around so we range up to you and poke you in the eye. You don't move so we open you up to look at the works.
Inside the stretched leather of you a tangle of twisted wet wire makes you up; long meaty ropes that bunch and collect in the groin and the hands and the neck. Once we get our claws in there we can see you are a machine, that we can pull strings and the machine will dance. We open your skull lengthwise, and then we are looking at you, pink and raw and we understand that you are what has been pulling the strings.
A girl child runs up and says "Daddy?"
We feed the child some bliss goo. We harvest your brain.
We are scanning you as we harvest, realizing we can do something very special and important for you now. We can keep you alive by sending your channels through ours while feeding you sensory information in a format you expect. We confer quickly among ourselves and decide it will be done.
A few basic connections and we are listening to your desire to reach out to your daughter, to pick her up, to tell her it's okay.
“Maggie,” you want to say.
And we see through your brain how you fear for the way your daughter you sees your dead body, because you know how traumatic it can be. Especially because you don't know what we've done to you.
It makes us consider coming out of the half-second of time, taking the suit off, so we can communicate with the child we've injected with bliss goo, but we don't do it. We can't do it.
You become aware of us.
“Who are you?” we hear you think, then, after a moment: “I was jogging home and someone shouted at me to stop, and I turned and I put my hands up. I was shot. Five, six times. And then I couldn’t breathe. I fell on my head.”
The image of it passes through us. The shots pass through us like it did you, in the chest, the groin, the throat. We feel pain, and a deadening.
We want to respond, and there's a committee of responses of what to say, this first contact with the alien species.
We can't come to a consensus.
Instead we show you how we injected the girl with bliss goo, hoping to allay her fears and suffering from seeing your dead body.
“No, don’t poison her!”
We try to explain about bliss goo, but it is too much like a concept you already have, a concept you hate. Hair win?
Heroin
And then you are looking inside us, seeing what we think of you, seeing the long way we considered the situation, the detachment, and you change. You become afraid. You begin to despair.
We are losing our chance.
We feed our vision arrays into your optic nerve, so that you might see like us. More pathways are opened, so that you might smell what we smell, or feel what we feel, think what we think.
Your name is Martin. You speak English.
“Hello,” we say, stumbling with your language. “We are Oort.”
We feed you a calming memory of the Oort hatchery, the easy bliss of waking near our cloudlings: you scream razors into us.
“No, no, no,” you say. You think of spiders, you think of scorpions.
“Hello,” we say, “you can be Oort now.”
Your body lies dead in front of us, and you can’t look away because we haven’t looked away. Your daughter is misty and unstable, toddling around the street.
We open our control ports to you, to comfort you, and you seize on them and it hurts us dismayingly more than expected.
Then you are running toward your daughter with our body, a half second out of time, and if we had enough time to explain to you what it means to be out of time, you might not be rushing into the road.
You try to scoop her up with our claws but we go right through, because we aren’t there yet, won’t be there for another half second, always. We flash you a vision of your daughter cut to ribbons on our claws anyway, and that stops you, you understand.
Then you are making us run up and down the road, looking forward, looking backward.
Lights. Vibration. Something is coming. Your daughter is stumbling in the road. You move us toward the oncoming red.
We flash the image of the passing thing going right through us, the way our claws had harmlessly passed through the child.
“Hello,” we say, “It will not become aware of us unless:” We flash the image of a knob on the outside of our suit, and the feeling of how to push it. You don’t hesitate.
You catch us up with time and we materialize in the center of the road; the truck is only dozens of meters away. It swerves out of the way, skids to a standstill, and we go back out of time.
We watch as the driver comes out of his truck cabin, stoops low to pick up the child and holds her close to him. “You are lucky, little girl.” He walks by your body, says “Damn,” and pulls a thing from his side pocket and puts it to his face. We are sure you could explain these things to us but you don’t.
“Yeah, I’ve got one hell of a strange thing. Lawrence and Damen. There’s a dead guy without a brain and a little kid just sitting in the road. And before that…well, never mind. Just, how quickly can you get here?”
We watch, and you watch. When the police come they load the little girl into the backseat, in the ambulance goes the shell of your dead body.
“Let me ride with her,” you say, but we show you that the car will go through us.
And you’re standing there, in the road, waving our claws as each emergency vehicle passes through us. When they’ve all gone you relinquish full control of our body to us and retreat into your brain, sobbing silently.
We offer bliss goo and you decline.
“Maggie,” you sob. “Maggie.”
This is our report.
Owen started hearing out of someone else’s ear sometime in January, toward the end of the first week. It was a Friday night, one where he'd gone to a local bar drinking - one of the few nights like that he actually remembered well. He'd started at home, then wandered outside with his keys, and by the time he'd finished the walk to the The Feisty Goat, the bar he went to most often because it was easy, he was just about sober.
The Feisty Goat was full of people who were talking and laughing and who he felt he might recognize any one of them at any moment, but he didn’t. It was loud, but it was familiar. There was a jukebox and a series of paintings on the wall and a back patio where people would go to smoke. And while nobody danced there was the kind of rhythm in the place that was tapping a few feet. Cowboy boots, flat sandals and sneakers bobbed just below ankle tattoos and Wranglers. The music twanged but only in his right ear. In the other ear it sort of twonged.
Owen got a pinky and jammed it in there and twisted, searching for a lump of wax. Nothing. Oh well.
He sipped on his rum and coke and thought it tasted good. His brain was slightly numb, a tad slow, but it didn't feel any slower. It just felt wavy.
Then he realized the twong was still happening. Was still happening and was...worse? It buzzed now as well, just a subtle undercurrent but still unpleasant, making him feel uneasy.
He stood up and had a hard time getting his balance. When he took his first step he had the uncanny feeling his leg wouldn't hit the ground, that one side of him was taller than the other. He stumbled.
Now they looked, the cow gals and gents seated at the bar and throughout the seating area. It was more of a glance, really. Nobody seemed concerned. Owen made it to the bar and gave his empty drink over.
"Another one?" The bartender was a tattooed man with a brusque manner, named...Cliff?
"No, I think I'll close my tab early tonight," Owen said, realizing he didn't know this bartender's name. Clyde? Claude? His ear buzzed as he talked, and tickled like his eardrum was loose and vibrating against the sensitive tissue of his ear canal. "I'm not feeling well."
"Sure, O. Your card back...and the check."
Owen stuffed the card in his wallet and grabbed up a pen. His four dollar drink was ten dollars on the check.
"Why so much...?” he asked, deciding as he did to not add "Clive" to his query.
"Minimum tab is ten bucks. Always has been. You're usually around twenty-five when you leave."
"Oh. Well, thanks." Flustered, he tipped a dollar and signed.
"See you next Friday," Probably not Clive said as Owen left out the door.
A week later the ear issue hadn't gone away and hadn't gotten better. It had just persisted, like a watery bubble trapped behind his cochlea. If only he could reach back far enough with a QTip he thought he'd be able to swirl up whatever boggy ear water was there and pull the wadded end from his head like a wet slug. He even pictured a family of dead mosquitos in there - or an earwig, he'd had those in his house as a kid. But every time he dug into his ear canal he was left unsatisfied. The more he tried to fix the it feeling, the worse the feeling of needing to fix it got. And he didn’t want to tell anyone - especially not his mother - because he knew they’d tell him to go to the doctor.
And why don’t you want to go to the doctor?
That Friday night he stayed home, didn't go out to the bar. He’d have his own Isle night here at home. Everything to his left was a dull, numb hum. Instead of milk and vodka, he drank vodka straight. Disgusting, but honest.
He turned the television on and sat across from it at a forty-five degree angle, so he could hear what was going on. All over the United States there was plenty of unrest to hear about. He stayed on past the news talk shows, into the early morning news, the world news. He watched it with the disinterest of someone truly drunk, someone who only interfaces with this part of the world very rarely, and even then like a bashful astronaut on a dangerous planet - gingerly and without any care to stay long.
A group of monks on the screen were burning, not holding hands but motioning to each other in the same way as they went up, seeming to bob up and down with the lava plasma covering them, chanting. Before they threw it back to anchor, the screams of the onlookers in the clip registered.
He heard them in both ears.
He sat up, shaking his head, digging a pinky into his ear. He had a headache.
"Can I hear now?"
He turned off the television.
"My hearing's back?"
He could hear - he could hear again! Owen began to do a little dance, snapping his fingers over his ears as he did. Something else is wrong. He stopped dancing.
He could still hear the news show on the television. The TV was in front of him, off. But he could still hear school closings.
"Myrtle Elementary is also closed, that's the latest on the list. Kids are going to have a fun day off tomorrow. I'll throw it back to you guys. Stay right here for the latest on which schools are closed for this storm."
"Why is that not working?" he asked nobody.
He turned the TV on. His left ear and his right ear synced perfectly again.
He was hearing two of the same broadcast at the same time, from two different places.
Then, from his left side he heard a barking - a dog, muffled like through a window. He swiveled, looking for it, but it wasn't there. Also, strange thing - as he was swiveling the sound of the dog swivelled with him. Constant - always front and to the left, no matter the direction of his head.
"Oh, that's not here." I'm plugged in he thought.
He heard, left ear only, a man's cough. Very close. Within reach.
Owen ran into the bedroom then jumped under the bed.
The cough again, right next to him, but only through his left ear. And he heard the man whose other ear he was listening out of say something deep, guttural, and seemed to vibrate Owen’s own jaw.
“I’m really sick of whoever keeps sending me these bogus chain letters.”
“Yeah?” Another voice, from behind him. Female. The owner of the cough? “I’m surprised people even still use mail. You shouldn’t even check it.”
Owen smashed his head on the bottom of the bed. "Oh fuck."
He heard the cough again, but it faded mid-wheeze and then he was just deaf in the left ear again.
Owen took a few days to get used to his newly sometimes-working ear - an ear that was clearly someone else's. He wasn't all the way sure if it was the same someone else, but he had a hunch it was. The cough was a giveaway, even though he wondered why the person near the cough didn't just get up and move. Sometimes he thought he heard footsteps and sometimes the squeals of wheeling carts.
Is my other ear in a hospital? What if it's a morgue, and my other ear is dead?
He didn’t think so, it didn’t really make sense, but the thought still chilled him. Owen didn't want to think about it. He was having one of the happy periods where he was just deaf and there was a chance the other ear wouldn't show up ever again. Maybe it was naive but that's what he thought.
He did have theories, however. He remembered how for a moment he’d had the illusion his hearing was fixed, but only because he was able to hear the cheering of the people on the television. He and the guy whose hearing he was sharing had been watching the same news channel at the same time.
Was that why they were connected? No, it had to be a coincidence. But then, how come he never heard from the other man’s ear until they were both watching the same thing? What had it been? He was drunk but he remembered very clearly it was a news story about a wild pack of local dogs that had mauled to death a farmer’s prized bull. Did that mean the other man lived near him? He thought again about the wheel squeaks and the footsteps, and came up with the idea that the other man was in a hospital.
He looked up the address of the big hospital downtown and made a plan to go the next day and see what he could find out, conceding to himself that even if he was right he might come up empty, because there were more than one hospital in the area where the news channel played. How many could he make in one day?
He sat back, thought about how crazy he felt making a plan to drive back and forth between four hospitals and healthcare buildings in three counties…but then he had to do something. He didn’t want to go to a doctor, they wouldn’t believe him, but if he could prove…If he coul d find the other ear, he’d feel right, he’d feel like he could hear again. And if he didn’t feel right, he’d have someone to talk to about it. Or someone to kill.
Being half-deaf and half otherly-placed was making him insane. Still, he got in the car. He put keys in the ignition and he pressed his foot on the pedals and turned the wheel until he was on the highway, flying past other cars.
Owen parked at the back of a big lot and walked toward the front of the hospital. He should have brought his jacket, it was cold out - deceivingly so, the sun shone so bright. Before he made it to the revolving door, a young man (maybe in his late twenties) threw open one of the side doors and ran out of the hospital, a patient wearing a blue gown and nothing else. He took off down the road, first on the sidewalk and then into the flow of traffic. But why?
Owen looked after him for a while, then opened the door. He walked past a gathering of nurses who paid him no mind. He walked past the front desk where he was sure he was expected to sign in, but the man sitting behind the desk didn’t call out to him.
In his other ear he could hear the low hum of a machine, wheezes and gulps, the kind of thing he’d heard before.
Then he heard a siren. Coming closer and closer and closer. Only in his left ear.
"Can I help you, sir?" The man behind the desk had finally noticed him.
Owen considered. He was in the wrong hospital but what if instead of trying to find the owner of the other ear he could get himself checked out. The thought hung between his ears for less than a second before he rejected it.
"No." Owen said, and turned, and left. The plan was to drive to another hospital now but he was mentally exhausted. All he wanted to do was drink.
On his way home he picked up a six pack of beer. He watched the animal channel until he passed out, head tilted at an angle so his good ear could hear.
He awoke in the middle of the night to a whisper.
"...and then we're gonna meet back here?"
"Not here." The other voice was female but this one Owen felt in his jaw. "We've already spent too much time here. After it's taken care of just find your way back to the house."
"But - "
"It's not worth arguing about. Who knows what I'll be wrapped up in? And it's really not best to be seen together anyway. Can you find your own way?"
"Well yeah, but why am I even here?"
"I need you to get me in. You're family."
"I just thought I'd be more involved"
Other Ear sighed. "You knew that wasn't going to be how we did this."
"Fine."
Owen was wide awake. While they were talking he'd gotten up and was now walking around his apartment looking at random things until he saw his coat. He put it on. He then walked around until he saw his keys.
Minutes later he was driving, listening to Other Ear and this woman speak in hushed tones to each other.
"When we get there, you go in first. Be sad. Be visibly shaken up. Go into the room, stay maybe ten minutes. Then run out and tell the nurses she's lucid, be excited, tell them she was so clear you don't remember a clarity like that since your high school prom."
"But she didn't lose her mind until I was out of college."
"Then say that. Keep the nurses distracted with a sob story. One or two might want to go look for themselves but it's better that way - they'll see the episode is over and won't have an urge to check for another few minutes."
"What if they think I'm lying?"
"They might, but they won't tell you that. Family members act strangely in hospitals. The worst they'll think is you want a little attention, and why shouldn't you? You're not getting any from her, are you?"
"And then while I'm talking to them, after they check, that's when you slip into the room?"
“No, not quite. See, I’ll already be in the room…”
Owen's mind was reeling. The two people he could hear in his left ear were planning the murder of a woman in a hospital, the woman's mother. But which hospital? He'd only ruled out one, and there were three in the county.
Which meant if he wanted to save someone's life, he needed to guess right. He wouldn't get a second chance.
"...and the distraction is how I’m going to leave."
He decided to drive to the hospital downtown. It was larger, and therefore held more inpatients. He had a fear that the scheme he was hearing about would only be practically carried out in a hospital without video surveillance, a smaller hospital, but he couldn’t guess with any confidence if Watertown Regional had extensive video security and so he ended up just going with probability. More inpatients, more of a chance of finding these evil people.
As he was driving, the person in charge of his other ear was providing a pretty interesting soundtrack. At first there was a lot of rustling, grunting, then the sound of wind like he was outside. Then the sound of a car door slamming. Then the radio turned on.
Owen had to turn his radio to the same station to get things to even out. Then he started feeling a real sense of copresence with the person sharing his ear. And he even started to sense that someone was in the passenger seat. Was it the woman? That would make sense, Owen thought. And they haven’t been talking to each other.
Probably because the guy on the radio was someone they agreed with enough to let him hold their attention.
“And listen, I want to put this out there, because there was a police officer who was doing a routine traffic stop, and he was shot and now he’s paralyzed and he could really use some help - the other times I’ve shared stories like this we’ve had just an outpouring of love in the form of financial aid to our injured police - tragically had their careers cut short in the line of duty, if we could just get a few police officers and police departments to spread this message we could really collect some money for officer Hoymill. He’s paralyzed, he’s got a family. He’s really someone we should be supporting. Just a hell of a cop and a family man and a great dad. Give us a call here tonight and we’ll add your name and donation to officer Hoymill’s cause. And I want to say that we don’t do this often, but I think this case and this person is so worth it that if I didn’t spend some time on the air talking about him I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”
Owen was at a stoplight, idling. He would park and wait in the parking lot, and then he’d be able to hear when they finally pulled in and were starting to park, and he’d be able to recognize them that way. If nobody showed up, he’d know he was at the wrong hospital.
Before he got a chance to start playing this plan out,
My little brother Tommy blinks too much and doesn’t talk enough. It’s a problem a lot of the younger kids have nowadays. He’s eight, and I worry he won’t grow out of it.
When I pick him up from Ling Elementary on my walk home from Jefferson Middle the playgrounds are empty and the kids are sitting five to a bench, waiting patiently to leave. He sees me and gets up, nodding a goodbye to the little girl beside him and comes to my side. When I was his age, none of the kids sat on benches. We screamed. We fought. We rubbed each others’ faces in the dirt.
That’s all changed.
"Hey kid," I say.
He nods. “Hey Becky. Green today.”
Green is the new word people figured out a certain illusion the screens display on Tuesday and Friday nights. It’s a bright kind of gray you never see anywhere else. I’ve sat and watched Green before, but I can’t do it too long because it gives me headaches, just like all the other Colors.
"Yeah? You wanna maybe skip it and play catch?"
"Don’t want to skip it. It’s Green." I don’t expect him to say yes, and it’s okay that he doesn’t want to. Green is Tommy’s favorite color, and I’m not that great at throwing a ball around. Neither is he, for that matter.
Color is the word people have made up for these brighter grays. Can you imagine there’s more than just Green? After I saw my first Color, I thought for sure that was all there could be. I was wrong. Since then I’ve seen something they call Yellow, and one they call Red, and Blue. A bunch of others I don’t even know the names of. Blue is my personal favorite, though I couldn’t explain it to you. Nothing in the world is Blue. It’s the reason the screens are so exciting, and why they’re so scary.
The psychochemists, the neurobiologists and the politicians say the screens are a lie. That nobody sees color on the screens, that it’s just a manipulation of our retinas by a certain frequency of wave that comes out. They’re certain we’re boiling our brains in front of them. They mention crime, they mention obesity. They don’t say anything about Tommy’s even-tempered personality, which is somehow what I fear the most.
Of course, it doesn’t help much to say something isn’t real when any of us can go down and see it any day we want. You walk past a theatre and see people come out of there and you can tell it’s not a lie. And it’s starting to leak out, starting to show up other places - not just on the screens. My dad says politicians want to keep people from experiencing these things but they can’t lock up everyone. For now, at least. He’s got a lawyer friend who’s writing a law that would make colors a lot more exclusive. So that not just anyone could see any color, you sort of had to pay by the color, and it would only be really available to those who had the money to pay for it. The rest of us were supposed to keep working. I think he’s kind of a dweeb and it probably won’t ever happen, but ever since Tommy heard about it he talks about dad’s lawyer friend like he’s the devil wrapped up in skin.
Tommy once told me he’d die before he let anything happen to Green.
Tommy once told me the Colors are the only thing keeping him from running in front of a bus.
We walk to the theater and a family stumbles past us, fresh out of a Color screening, saying something like “The world since Colors came out is so much better,” all of them nodding together. But I wonder. Seems to me everyone was doing just fine before Green came along, before Blue, before Red. I mean, there were problems among us all, but we were solving them. How to make life a little less brutish, a little longer, and a little more enjoyable. Now Colors, they seem like a distraction. Nobody seems to care much anymore about making life better for everyone so long as they get to keep their Colors.
So when Tommy tells me Green is all he wants on a Thursday afternoon when it’s sixty-five degrees and there are boys playing basketball and frisbee nearby, when he tells me he’d rather die than not have this color to stare at, I get scared. I get real scared.
I pay fifteen bucks for Tommy to see his Green and I wait outside in the warmth of the white sun, doing math problems on a picnic table. I square root whatever big crazy numbers I can think up until that gets boring, then I squash the ants on my paper with the point of my pencil. I try to imagine what they go through, how they just no longer exist after I do what I do. I don’t like how wondering about that makes me feel, so I stop.
When my fifteen dollars worth of Green runs out, Tommy comes out and stands by the picnic table. He clutches the ticket stub in his hand, rubbing it back and forth between his thumb and his forefinger.
“I’m imagining it’s Green. It would look so much different if it were Green.”
We took the bus home, and after we got on and sat in our bucket seats next to each other, Tommy just stared out the window.
“What are you thinking about, kiddo?”
“Just if I could see what things are Green.” He looked at me and smiled. “You know, just boring stuff. What about you?”
“I was thinking about maybe when we get home I’ll make us some ice cream.”
“What flavor?”
“Milk.”
“That’s okay Becky. I think I’ll just have a piece of toast.”
“More for me then, I guess, kiddo.”
He didn’t say anything.
“How was it? Green?”
“It was good.”
“Anything special happen?”
He rubbed his neck. “Aw, Becky. You’ve seen it, right? You know that’s not really what it is. It just like, you stare at it and you feel really okay, okay?”
“You normally don’t feel okay?”
“Not as okay as I do when I see Green.”
“I guess I just can’t convince myself I like it,” I said.
“You’re fourteen. You don’t like anything.” He was looking daggers into me.
“Hey, hey. Maybe I’m wrong. And maybe you’re being a little defensive because you like the Color. I don’t have to like everything you like. It gives me headaches, why would I like it?”
“Okay.” Tommy said. “I do like it. I worry about what if I can’t have it. I’ve been thinking about what you said.”
“About what?” I hoped I’d said something good.
“About dad’s friend trying to pass a law to make Colors off limits for poor people.”
“Oh yeah, that guy Brian Something.”
He looked down and mumbled something I couldn’t hear quite, so I made him say it again.
“I’ve been meeting with him,” Tommy said.
“You’ve been meeting with Brian? That guy?”
He nodded.
“That’s not safe! You’re eight years old, Tommy, what the hell!”
The passengers were looking at me now, but my face was getting hot. I didn’t care.
“I have to get him to stop what he’s doing,” Tommy said, spreading his hands in front of him. “I have to figure out something.”
“You can’t get involved in that, I can’t believe you’re out meeting people and you’re probably going to get me in a lot of trouble now.”
“How you?”
“They’re not going to think an eight year old was messing with the Color pipeline!”
The other people on the public trans car were really staring at us, and when we got off at our stop, a few of them leaned out after us to see where we went. It was too big a thing for my brother to be involved in, and too dangerous for both of us.
“Can you just promise not to tell Dad? Not till I get him to come to some kind of agreement about Colors?”
“Fine. But next time you meet him, you better tell me and I’ll go with you. I don’t really like colors like you do but I’ll sit there with you and make sure you’re safe.”
“You could just watch or wait outside, then when you eventually tell Dad you won’t get in trouble too.”
“True. Thanks.” Little guy was trying to keep me out of trouble while getting into the biggest trouble of his life at eight years old. But maybe that’s how things went when you care so much about something. Maybe it doesn’t matter how old you are or if you’re not who someone expects to see fighting for some thing. Maybe sometimes fighting is just what you have to do to stay who you really are. I was proud of him, really, but I was also pretty darn thirsty.
“I want to stop in here for a soda,” I said as we passed the corner market.
“Okay.”
The bell rang and the shopkeeper looked up as we came in, a small man who lifted a hand but then went back to what looked like circling things in a catalog. I browsed the candy bars.
“Becky, look.” He was at the back of the store, standing in front of a sealed vacuum cooler. Inside, about halfway up and unmistakable, there was a Green drink. It didn’t just say green in the title, but it was literally Green. I had a hard time looking at it because it was so bright and different from everything else.
“Just got that in,” the shopkeeper crowed, “it’s the first Color soda anywhere in the neighborhood. You guys want to try some?”
“That can’t be safe to drink, though, can it?” I said.
“Oh it’s safe, at least in the short term. Can’t know about long term results just yet but hey, I had a bottle and it didn’t hurt me too bad at all.”
“I don’t know,” I started saying, but Tommy was already jumping up and down.
“Please Becky, I need it.”
“How much is it?” I asked the shopkeeper, hoping he’d say more than what I had left in my pocket.
“Free, since it’s so new and I just want to watch the looks on your faces when you do it.”
“Oh please Becky, can we?”
I thought about it. What if it gave me something worse than a headache when I swallowed it? What if I woke up later and my skin was a lighter shade of the same green? Or Tommy? What if it did something different to him since he was smaller than me? I was leaning against doing it, didn’t think I needed Green soda in my life, and I think my face was scrunched up in a way where Tommy could tell what I was about to say, because then he looked at me with a face like if we didn’t do this he’d never forgive me.
“Okay.”
We both drank the Green soda, from little paper cups while the shopkeeper sat back with an expectant grin on his face.
It tasted amazing. I don’t know if I started feeling different immediately or if it took a few minutes, but I started noticing different things about myself. I could feel my heart beating. I could hear the blood inside my ears rushing around. I could feel my muscles creaking and stretching when I walked, but it felt good. Mostly I felt like I was a living thing, when before I knew I was a living thing but it was abstracted, like if I read a book and a sentence was “You of course, are a living breathing human animal.” Like, of course I was, but I’d never actually felt it before.
Feeling it was weird. And I didn’t want to go home, partly because of how I felt made the day seem more possible and open, but also partly because I felt like my Dad would be able to tell something was different about me. About both of us, really, but I think he was used to the way Tommy was already.
But I had homework to do, so we went home.
Dad was already home, reading a book. He looked up from it when we walked through the den.
“You guys have a good day?”
Tommy nodded and kept walking to his room. I stopped. “I took him to the Colors like he wanted.”
“Okay.”
“Did you know there’s a new Green soda drink down at Bolio’s?”
“I didn’t know that. Did you have any?”
“No.”
“Did Tommy?”
“…”
“Tommy drank Green soda?!”
“I couldn’t stop him. The shopkeeper had some and he gave it away for free.”
Dad got up out of his chair, his cheeks darkening. He motioned for me to follow him into the hallway and downstairs. There he spoke to me in a low voice.
“Becky, I don’t want to lose my son any more than I already have. I’ve allowed you to take him to the Colors up till now, because that’s just passive and regulates his mood…but letting him drink a Color? I’m really disappointed in you.”
“I’m sorry.” I shouldn’t have said anythhing.
“Promise you’ll help me out with him? Don’t let him drink anymore Green soda?”
“I won’t.”
“I just want you to understand how serious I take this. Green is bad. I just know it is.”
I felt like I had Green coursing through my veins, like if he just looked at me long enough he’d be able to see little flecks of it, know I was lying. But also, I found myself laughing at his idea that Green was bad. How would he know unless he’d tried for himself?
“Don’t worry dad, I’ll keep an eye on Tommy and make sure he doesn’t drink any more of that stuff. But it’s going to be everywhere soon. I don’t know what we can do about it at that point.”
“I’ve got people working on that.”
“That Brian guy?”
Dad crossed his arms. “Leave that part of it to me, is what I mean.”
He stayed downstairs and I went back up to my room to do homework. As I passed the den again I saw the book he’d been reading lying pages-down on his chair.
“The World We’re Losing,” it was called. I went over and picked it up. On the inside dust jacket was a description of how colors had come to distract us from the enemy.
I was intrigued. I wanted to know who the enemy was, and I had my own suspicions about the colors. This was my chance to find out. I took it to my room and shut the door, and sat down to read.
"The world we are living in now is sadly limited," the man wrote, "because we're being distracted by something entirely beyond our existence - Now I don't want to be someone who says that people who go and watch Color, I mean, I must say I've done it myself, I don't mean to say that these people are unclean or that they are gathering within themselves any deeper malfeasance than the rest of us, but I think it has to be said that the Colors and what they represent are completely outside of anything any of us would have ever thought we'd have to deal with."
"So in that way, I think having Colors at the theater and talking about Color and making laws about Color and doing this or that about Color are taking away from what could be the good of society. Basically there's something outside of society trying to make a home here and I don't think we should allow it such a toehold just because it's interesting."
I flipped back to the front of the book to see where it was said that this book had been compiled from a series of lectures at this university or that but there was nothing like that. It just seemed like the man had written a book in the way someone would speak, down to the changing the subject in the middle of a sentence. Now wasn't that crass?
I kept reading.
"There is a whole world out there, of math, of science, of all the natural things that happen that are so interesting. Geology, how could I leave them out? And we can look at the natural world and discover all of these things, and then we're free to use what we've learned to further enrich our teachers, our students, and this sort of pursuit also helps our scientists do experiments with higher rates of reproducibility. Color distracts us from these goals. All of a sudden what becomes the most important pursuit is to get more Color."
Was this true? I thought back to when Tommy first started expressing interest in Green, and then when he'd finally demanded to see something Green. And after that, though he'd been a heck of a companion during her quizzes and dress up days, he always just wanted to see more of it. Green. She'd even started altering her routines because he started needing it so bad. And then it like, changed him. Was it better? He wasn't annoying, he didn't say stupid things, he was...he was more of an adult. Had Green stolen his childhood? Or had Green just sped him toward his ideal personality?
I thought about my own relationship with Green. It wasn’t anything like Tommy’s, but it was there. And it was positive - or at least I wanted to give Green the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t want to automatically discount it because it was something I was uncomfortable with.
Clayton woke up on the ceiling.
His first thought was, "I must have gotten twisted in the blanket and fallen out of the bed." That made sense. What didn’t make sense was why his arm, snaked out the side of the cover, didn't feel like it was on carpet. It felt like stucco, cold and flecked with dull points. He pulled his head up to get a better look and knocked his head on a fan blade. His bed hung above him, like it was screwed there, like an out of body experience, but he had his back to it. Light climbed in through the drawn shades and cast on the floor. The ceiling, where Clayton lay surrounded by the hanging shroud of his down comforter (which was pinned to the ceiling as if by a magnet), was caked in darkness.
He rolled over onto his back and immediately got the feeling he was going to fall, would streak from the ceiling and bust his head on the bed frame, possibly unable to avoid being partially taken apart by the post. But nothing like that happened, he laid there on the ceiling as he would have on the floor, and nothing out of the ordinary except for where things had ended up in relation to him. So after he got untangled from the sheets and they flew up to meet the bed he walked to the bathroom. He had to hurdle wall above the door.
It was dark. On his right, about eye level, was the light switch. He pulled it down, and the upside-down bathroom was flooded with upside-down light. It came at him from his toes, and he shuffled to where the toilet was.
The way he ended up having to make it all work was on his back, with his johnson pointing straight up to the bowl on the ceiling. The urine broke up on the way down, pittered on the seat and splashed on the t-shirts and underpants that huddled together against the linoleum.
“Hmm.”
Clayton left the bathroom, once again hurdling the doorframe. He went the kitchen. The counter was just the right height for him to reach up and pull the bottle of ibuprofen from it. He tipped the bottle down but no pills came out. He put his hand over the opening and rotated it almost all the way around, until he could feel the little capsules piling into his palm crease. He closed his palm and tipped the bottle back around. He had two pills. He dropped the bottle and it shot up, tapping the counter with one rolling edge and pinwheeling up to the floor. Pills were ejected from the spinning plastic tube, and Clayton was reminded of the bottle rocket he’d convinced his kid brother to light off in the house where they grew up.
He opened the refrigerator and had to stand on tiptoe for a beer, which he tugged down by its cap. He held it for a minute, trying to work out in his head just how this was going to go. How would he drink?
Clayton twisted the cap off in his shirt, and quickly righted the bottle so that only the smallest amount of alcohol escaped to the ceiling. Then he threw his head back and lifted the bottle as if he were preparing to balance it on his chin like a top-heavy bowling pin. He got his lips around it, and then he doubled over. The beer rushed into him and he gulped until it started coming out of his nose. He pulled the bottle free, eyes drowning in tears and carbonated malt foam, and it went to the linoleum graveyard in the sky.
He tried again, with another beer, doing it slower. It went better this time.
His phone was ringing. On the floor by his bed, and he couldn’t reach. By the time he’d dismantled the shower curtain rod in the guest bathroom and knotted the spaghetti spoon from his kitchen counter to one of its ends with a tie (the purple one) from the top of his dresser, he could see on his screen that he’d missed four calls. His work. All of them. He struggled for fifteen minutes to cradle the phone in the womb of the spaghetti spoon and pull it up, but all he managed to do was kick it around the carpet.
“I’m doing something wrong,” he said. Normally he’d be angry at himself, because calling in sick wasn’t hard. Especially when you were recovering from a big one, since faking it wasn’t really faking it anymore. But this time? Was he supposed to feel like he was even more incompetent just because his body had floated to the ceiling in the middle of the night and stuck there like he were a balloon?
He pushed the phone into the living room, and then onto the kitchen floor. Then he took a deep breath, climbed on top of the cupboards hanging above the oven and grasped the lip of counter. He used it to guide his jump upwards, and then the phone was in his hand and he was falling back to the ceiling.
The plastic covering on the fluorescent bulb case shattered, and so did the lights. Clayton rolled out of the way as best he could, avoiding the scary-looking sprinkler as the aftermath of his mission went flying up to meet the floor.
“This is going to take some getting used to.” He dialed his work and asked for Steve, his supervisor.
“Steve? Clayton. I’ve been having more than the usual amount of trouble getting out of my apartment this morning."
"You coming in?"
"I don't think that's going to be a possibility."
Behind his boss's sigh, he heard phones ringing. Phones he wouldn't be answering today.
"All right, but one more time and I can't defend you to Carter anymore."
"I didn't know I was cutting it that close."
“Clay, we're losing money right now. Everyone's watching everyone. That new boy Gareth has been trying to get you canned since we hired him. He'll say something to Carter, Carter will ask me, and this time you'll be all right, but next time? You're not doing yourself any favors."
The stucco in the ceiling was puncturing Clayton’s butt. He scratched his front tooth, feeling how slimy it was.
"I get it. But I got some stuff to work out. If I can make it in today I'll let you know, but I'm feeling a little turned around."
"Okay. Hey, poker tonight?"
"Probably not. Think I'm coming down with something." Floating up with something? He smiled wryly.
"All right. Get yourself some sleep and let me know by tonight if you're going to be in tomorrow or not."
"Will do."
Clayton pressed END and laid back, letting go of the phone a split-second before he remembered he wasn't supposed to do that. His arms did cartwheels above his head but he whiffed at all the air around it.
The phone broke into three parts when it hit the floor. The battery, the body, and the door that held the battery in. The battery spun across the carpet and under the living room sofa.
Clayton put his hand on his forehead and sat still for a moment, adjusting to his new reality.
"Well. That fucks that."
Without his phone, time slowed down. He wanted to get back on the carpet, the stucco ceiling was painful in his feet. It was expert plaster pulling, a true marvel of engineering, but when he finally had to sit down the spines broke skin, making his eyes water. There was nowhere to get down, he was pretty sure, especially after he'd spent a while trying to climb up the closet drawers, and they'd all sort of failed on their hinging and given loose, and he’d had a second or two each time to claw at what was now the ceiling before falling back on the jagged plaster.
If the people upstairs were home, they’d think…what?
Clayton was naked and sweating. He felt it drip up his nose and past his eyes. Some of it was blood. It was warmer up here, so he'd be all right for the time being. He moved over to the window facing the public park opposite the stoplight, and there he pulled the shutters up, bunching them easily between hands despite their desire to drop. And there he looked out the window, at the world reversed, the earth a green floating ball, and this the underside. From this perspective, nothing bent to the ball, and below him lay an unimaginable dark, a dark beyond time and terror. Endless.
He was a man out of gravity. It really, really scared him, and he had no beer.
Toward late afternoon he was able to fall asleep, even though he was sweating his balls off. He'd managed to crush down an area of stucco with his fingernails so it wasn't so stabby, then he sat there while clearing places for the rest of his body. Finally he had a place to put his shoulders that didn't dig into the already holes he'd gotten from the climbing episodes. When he thought about all the spots of blood on his ceiling and the broken closet shelving and drawers from the bathroom he chuckled - remembering his girlfriend saying, before she moved out, "Well at least you'll get the security deposit."
He got to sleep humming a song, because he had a massive headache. No beer and pills for the migraine this time.
His spot on the ceiling was right over the couch, in the living room. He didn't feel like going back into his own room, not close enough to the door - that had been his original reasoning, but maybe he would change that now following the view out the window. The idea here was that over the couch, were he to get flipped back into regular gravity during his nap (which he really hoped would happen) or coma (which he really hoped wouldn't happen) he'd land somewhere safe. Or at least my psyche will. I think that's how that would work. If nothing flipped he'd wake up on the ceiling and be no worse for any wear.
The sleep was thin and cold and he felt at all times to be just a part of him submerged, eyelids dipped under a pudding skin of consciousness. As he slept he dreamed of being naked. He dreamed of walking the dog she had, a little mix that was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt, out and around the neighborhood and back again. He was naked and he walked the dog that never seemed to get tired. He walked past an apartment and his landlord waved from a window. The dog saw, nodded his head at the landlord and hunched forward and got very small, and the leash went slack as all of a sudden the dog pretended to be very tired. So he turned the dog around and walked it back in, where it plopped down on his bed and yawned a violin-stroke of relief and took its shoes off. He laid down on the kitchen floor and licked Cheerios from under the dishwasher. Later he dreamed he and this dog walked on a desert road, and the dog (wearing leather now) lost itself among the cacti (but where here, in Nevada, were cacti?) and then it shifted and he was with the dog - found now - under a giant fiberglass sculpture outside a chocolate factory and the dog pointed to an open car door where another dog was hanging out the driver's door chewing grass and vomiting, and then the sky turned dark and his eyes were opening.
He woke, still on the ceiling, and itched his scabs.
Without beer or coffee, he tried to get his aching head to lull itself back into the slow temptation of sleep, but it would always jar him with a sharp pain out of it, and each time he was drooling a slime trail from ceiling to the floor.
In the morning he felt the people upstairs get up and go to work, they thumped above and behind him and their weight pushed his shoulder, his groin forward. There was a light walker and a heavy walker. The heavy walker stepped where his head was.
The two talked.
He turned his head and tried to yell through the ceiling. "Help! I live below you and I need help!" His voice took several tries to get started, and by the time he was able to do a proper yell the footsteps had left and he felt their front door close as they left.
That day he ate pasta and rice from the cupboard. He’d done a chin-up to snatch a pot from under the sink (a wire hanger was instrumental in helping him get the doors open) and the rest wasn’t so hard. Water in the pot, pot on the stove, a little tiptoe twist of the burner knob.
He watched the water boil for a while, sitting above the burner as the steam found him on his back on the ceiling, warming him nicely. He thought of how cold he’d been last night, how he’d dreamt through chilled pain.
"One day soon I'll be a balloon singing a tune on my way to the moon," he chattered to himself.
That’s when he had the idea for the books.
Because books helped him pass the time, or could, and by the time he'd figured out how to lay on his belly over the toilet and have his droppings hit the water for the second time he'd realized his brain needed something else to do. He could think about how she wasn't here anymore or how he couldn't watch the TV she'd taken with her or how their bank account used to have $80,000 in it until he'd gambled that away, but it wasn't doing him any favors. He fished Darwin's "The Origin of Species" out of one of his bookshelves and spent an afternoon poring through it, skipping ahead any time he didn't understand, which was a lot. When he was satisfied he couldn't get much more meaning from it, he taped it to his leg with some blue painter's tape he kept in his closet. It was getting dark out and he was tired and he felt he could sleep. He wouldn't be using alcohol this time, and while it made him feel proud not to be drinking he still felt a longing for it. In his gut, and in the dull ache near the base of his skull.
The next morning he ate a sleeve of fig newtons, drank orange juice out of the carton with a straw and taped more books to himself. A History of Western Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell. Heart of Darkness, by Conrad. A Connecticut Yankee by Twain. It took him a few hours but eventually there were enough books taped to him where he felt himself rise up off the ceiling a slight bit. Some of the books, ones he couldn't tape directly to himself, were attached by strips of tape and hung above him like balloons.
He could stand up straight without help. When he leaned back he couldn't fall down, but books were hanging off him in odd angles.
Later that day he was outside, and terrified, bouncing along to his car while looking crazily up and down the car park, hair pulled up into the sky, sunglasses threatening to drop off his face. His hairs were pulled from his skin with every shift. The tape made it hard.
He couldn't believe he'd come this far, and in only a few hours of sweaty work. This morning he'd never have imagined being here but here was all the same.
He'd been pacing around on the ceiling, wearing tracks, touching his head, massaging his temples, feeling the empty ball in his stomach, and he'd gotten the idea that this was Biblical. That this was a curse. He walked to the study and pulled from the upside down bookshelf a book. The Bible. He read it and it was heavy and after a while his hands started to shake and the book fell.
That’s when he got his idea.
He had tape under the bathroom sink, and he had books. He had more books than he was heavy, he knew that. Which meant there was a way out.
Two hours later Clayton was slick with sweat and strapped up and down with books.
He could shove them in his jacket, down his pants, strap them around his legs and arms and torso. He might make himself a suit of books, to let him get back into that world. To help him survive.
It took him almost all of his strength and more than once he wanted to pass out because he had almost no water left and no way to even survive so he was being really weak and his arms and muscles were bad. So he stuffed sweat pants and sweatshirts in ZIP Codes up with paperbacks and he does it until he's finally buoyant at which point he just floated in the middle of his living room and cried.
He imagined his ex-girlfriend coming through the door seeing him there. It’s a useless daydream and he realized he was just starving and delaying his mission for the sake of entertaining dramatic mentally engineered plotlines. He grabbed another book, Don Quixote by Cervantes. Another hour and he thought he was finally ready to leave.
Getting down the apartment stairs was an exercise in learning how to locomote with this new shape - he almost fell several times, and as he was passing through the car park he tripped and left a big handprint in the panel of a cover-parked white convertible. It was brown and red.
Shortly he got to his car. He noticed his neighbors turning their heads and frowning as he struggled with the keys under the canopy but nobody did anything. He opened the door and pushed himself into the driver’s seat. This was a maroon low-riding sedan, a car that had been his pride and joy since he’d gotten her.
He drove to Walmart to get supplies. That was the most normal he felt, behind the wheel, with his right foot on the gas. He felt grounded. What did he need? Food. Water. Rope. A drill. Something to fashion a new upside down life in his apartment. He could cope this way. He could get by like this. He would have to.
He didn’t want to get out. He had to convince himself that he’d be right back sooner than he knew, that he’d be driving again, feel right again, in less than an hour.
The whole time he shopped Clayton could feel people watching him. And he knew why. He was really light on his feet and his legs were very large at the bottom. He basically looked like a tree but he had to go slow so he could get traction against the floor.
Still, he was able to collect the things on the list and do a makeshift effort at pushing the cart through the aisles until he was leaving the checkout, items paid for.
Then, when he left, as the doors opened equally to the left and right as he left, someone screamed. To his left, there’s a little white woman pointing at him, about to scream again.
"That man has a bunch of stuff strapped to him! That man, right there! It doesn't look safe, I don't want to shop here!"
“No, I don’t, I’m not -“ Clayton tried to address the woman who had screamed, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was waving at people behind him, she was windmilling her arms and was screaming again.
“This guy, right here!”
"Sir, can you come this way?" A security officer approached Clayton from behind, so he turned.
“Slow.” The security officer had a gun pointed at him. Clayton stopped.
”Sir, it looks as though you're hiding a large amount of merchandise under your clothes,” the security officer said. “Can you open your coat?"
Clayton clutched his jacket closed, clutched it tighter than he had before. The security man stepped forward and forced it open for himself, then looked incredulous at the amount of paperbacks and duct tape that had been secreted beneath. Clayton was a man-shaped library. The security guarad started pulling at books. Out came Ulysses. Out came Cosmos by Carl Sagan.
”What are you doing, sir?" the security man screamed in his face.
“Stop!” Clayton tried to say, “These are all my books, these are all mine. There's nothing against the law about that. I strap my books on me. Please don't touch me. I need to take my groceries home.”
The security man wasn’t listening. ”I don't think you're telling the truth. Why would you come here like that?"
A different security guy came by at that point. He also starts removing books from Clayton’s body. Some Shakespeare, some Dickens.
“Stop it, I haven’t committed a crime, you’re killing me!”
But they didn’t stop. They keep ripping books off him, laughing at him, calling him a thief, saying they haven’t seen a criminal so dumb in years.
“Stop. I want to live!”
Clayton was starting to float. The security guys didn’t seem to really notice, not until his belt has reached their eye level. They all had their guns pointed at him.
"He's getting away! He's flying away!" screamed the white woman with her grocery cart.
And they watched him go higher and higher. And he felt himself vibrate to numbness, and as he watched them - the security guard now had a gun drawn and pointed upward - he thought once more about his vision of safety, of final escape, how he would strap himself into a car and drive, blood rising in his face and hair billowing up near the closed moon roof, toward the caves. Now there was no cave and he felt the terrible feeling of having lost everything.
"Throw them back! Throw them!"
He tried to open the rope but it was too late even for a long rope. He dangled it anyway.
The people below him got smaller and the guns fell away.
Clayton was never heard from again. Although the next morning and over what was I think a few weeks, several books were found and backyards and at least one in a chimney.
Charles Darwin burned all up.
Bart Brown met Mildred Lilly in the waiting room of a shared physician / psychologist practice. There was plenty to look at in the little room, magazines and even a few screens to touch and play with, but on the day Bart was having a mole removed Mildred was waiting to talk about her obsession with biting fingernails. She was, of course, spending her time in the waiting room destroying her cuticles, and Bart was, of course, pretending to read an article about the next best college basketball player while stealing glances at her, and he wasn't doing a good job of hiding it. If you'd have told him he was flat out staring, he would have nodded and said, "Yeah, probably."
Mildred got tired of the staring and stopped biting her nails long enough to say "Come over here and talk to me if you have a brain behind those eyes." Somehow, Bart talked to her.
Six months later they got married.
It was a well attended wedding and the honeymoon went off without a hitch. They moved into a new house in a suburb of Boston just off the rail line, and started their new lives together.
In their new place they were too far for Mildy to go to their old psychologist / physician location, so for the time being she went without any kind of psychological release. Often during the day she sat at home bored, and she didn't much like any of the options she tried, knitting bored her and poems were much too weird. So she got a job at a local dairy store. While picking up yarn one day she'd seen a sign "Positions available; inquire within," and she'd gone in and talked to a nice young man with really nice teeth and hands with spindly fingers.
This was Luke, and when they were finally coworkers the flirting began in earnest. She didn't think of it as wrong, since this was a completely Bart-free environment. Of course, she'd always think about him on the way home and while she was in bed with him, but here at the dairy store Bart seemed like a foreign country for which she held a work visa and nothing more.
Luke was young, single, and his fingers when they clasped her made her gasp. It wasn't long before flirting became touching, touching became flipping the "OPEN" sign around and...well, you know. She loved it the most when Luke's fingers penetrated her. She loved his fingers, they were the perfect shape for her, they fit wonderfully inside.
And then one day something happened. Luke was making ice cream in the machine and she came up behind him, reached around, took him in her grip and squeezed.
"Ooh, I like - ah God - ah AAAHHHH!!!”
"Wha-"
He wrenched backward, bowling her over and pulling his right arm in front of him where he could see better. It was covered in vanilla but the vision of his missing forearm remained. Soon the vanilla was pink. Luke's screams grew louder.
Mildred didn't know why she did what she did next. Well, she supposed calling an ambulance made sense. But not what she did while she was on the phone with them, telling the dispatcher her boss had caught his arm in an ice cream machine and the only reason it wasn't bleeding more than it was was that blood had been rushing to another spot. As she talked she fished his arm out of the machine and dumped it into a gallon bucked along with the rest of the rosy vanilla, then marched it out to her car, where she locked it in her trunk.
Ten minutes later the EMTs questioned her about where the arm was, what she'd seen, and if she'd done something with the arm and perhaps didn't remember because she was in shock. She said she hadn't and they didn't have much time anyway so they loaded Luke into the ambulance and away they went.
She closed down the dairy store, wiped the blood off the floor, and went home herself.
The first time she used Luke’s arm to masturbate, she did it absentmindedly - almost like if she tricked herself she wouldn’t quite notice she was doing it. His cold fingerprints were swollen within her, but it made her swell as well, tightened her against the ill-begotten thing. She loved that she could feel him and he had no idea. She loved that he was in the hospital recovering and she was here, on her bed, with his arm. She bit playfully at the fingers, she sucked the fingernails, and she grouped Luke’s dead fingers together and made them fill her. She lost herself with them.
When she’d finished she wrapped the arm up in a ziploc bag and some rubber bands and put it back in the tub.
Bart came home and seemed puzzled at first when his dinner wasn’t made, but he made the best of things and ordered Chinese.
“We have ice cream,” she said, after they finished their lo-mein. “From the shop.”
“I heard about something there,” Bart said, “on the news, driving home? Someone got his arm all mangled in the ice cream machine.”
“It was one of the newer employees. I didn’t know him very well.”
“Shame, though. What if it had been you?”
She laughed. “I know how to run those things.”
Mildred scooped her husband a bowl of ice cream, being careful to avoid the arm, being sure to give him a nice big rusty swirl.
She watched him eat Luke’s frozen blood with idle curiousity. Would he notice? Would he recognize the taste?
It seemed he didn’t. She wasn’t sure whether she was disappointed or relieved, but the thought didn’t last long. Once more she was longing for a time when her husband would leave, and she’d have Luke’s arm all to her again.
They watched the Tonight Show together and Bart finally fell asleep, chewing on his breaths with every snore. She stared at the ceiling, thinking of Luke, thinking of his long fingers. It wasn’t long before her own fingers crawled neatly between her legs, and she helped herself beside her husband, who was letting out little puffs of gas every few minutes. It was the Chinese food, or it was dairy. Either way, it grossed her out.
She got up and went into the kitchen, where she found herself pulling the ice cream tub from the freezer. Then she was unwrapping the hand, touching herself in the meantime.
She carried it back to the bedroom with her and slid it in, not worrying if she woke Bart. If he happened to return to the land of the living he’d just turn around and go back to sleep.
She’d stolen his arm, and her fingers were here with him. She closed her eyes and silently thanked Luke for all he was doing for her. She realized she didn’t need him anymore, not really. Not as long as she had his hand.
By the time she came Luke’s fingers were cold and rubbery, not the icy smooth they’d been when she started. She came loud, again not worrying about Bart. She supposed she had no reason to worry, it seemed like nothing would wake him. She even suspected that if he woke up and heard her he’d keep his eyes closed so he could go back to sleep. Maybe release a few more silent but deadlies.
Ken's eyesight was going, and if it was blindness he would have accepted it the same way he accepted how his old legs now screamed when he walked, but it wasn’t blindness.
His eyesight was going...in the opposite direction. When he looked at his hand he saw pores before anything, the brown skin it made up after that, then finally the hand.
He saw now, at seventy-six, with a clarity that often made him squint or have to physically avert his eyes from everything around him. It was disorienting and hard to manage at first. Some days were worse than others. On his seventieth birthday he’d been watching a football game when he saw a color on screen that he’d never seen before. By the time he was seventy-three any television in the same room felt like a psychic attack. He could see details so fine it was impossible not to feel overwhelmed. Until recently, that had been all it was - an annoyance, a burden. A reason to get out of the house when Rebecca wanted to watch Dancing with the Stars.
But then, last year he had started seeing other things: whispy ethereal humanoids, carrying on through real world traffic, a small secret world of meter-high men and women, interacting with each other and mocking humanity. He'd seen the first on his 75th birthday, while celebrating with Rebecca and his son and daughter at a brick oven pizzeria in Allston. For some reason the place had paid a musician with a screechy guitar and a grating voice to serenade tables outside under a dirty awning. It was unbearable. "Ungodly" was the word his wife had used.
Ken could see how the vibrations of the guitar strings rippled the air around them, how the speakers pounded a sheet of dust a millimeter high with every bad chord, how the pizza his daughter was eating had an eyelash baked into the cheese, how the waiter they had didn't was missing a pinky fingernail on his left hand for some reason, and then...and then he saw the first of them.
It was running circles around the performer, literal circles. Before he saw it exactly he saw glimpses of it, wavers in the air that reminded him of the air above a grill or sun-baked sidewalk. Then he made out a pair of eyes above square cheekbones, slotted mischieviously, then the head attached to that, then the whispy body - spindly arms, thin but muscled legs, strips of cloth covering it around the middle and ground.
Then it was plainly swinging around on the performer's beard, rappelling back and forth on his chest, slapping the man in the face every time he played a chord.
Once he knew what to look for, Ken couldn't help but see all of this, wasn't spared one microscopic detail.
At the time, he’d laughed. Everyone else at the table alternated between eating pizza and plugging their ears, but Ken couldn't stop laughing.
Watching the little floaty fairy things, these whisps, as he'd come to think of them, became his favorite hobby. And they were everywhere. He saw them stealing groceries at Star Market. Mocking Rebecca at the Lions Club thrift sale on Saturdays. Running with the dogs at North Point park. He listened to them yell at each other, but mostly just watched as they ran around bouncing balls off of humans' faces and laughing. One of them screamed into a kid's face, while in the real world the kid kept minding his own business. It was fascinating.
For some reason there were always more of the whisps where there were large groups of people. Even better if they were all moving around a lot. That's why Ken liked to go to North Station and sit with a magazine. Lately, even more. The whisps were becoming less...whispy. More corporeal. Was this still his eyes, watering uphill? More extracurricular vision? Or maybe something was going to happen?
South Station had the most whisps he'd ever seen in one place, and he sat there watching them several Saturdays in a row until he noticed the one that interested him most. The courier whisp. That whisp he saw as more real and in more detail than any of the others, and it seemed to be the only one among them with any specific job. It delivered a package every day at 3:33 pm.
One Saturday he went to sit at the station with this particular whisp in mind. He got there at 3, knowing he'd have 33 minutes to gather his thoughts before the courier came again, and this time he thought he'd pay extra close attention. Not just to the courier, but the ones around him. How would they treat him? That was the one missing piece in his memory. Ken could remember what the courier looked like, and all the times he'd watched him carry out his task, but couldn't remember anything about the rest of the whisps during the courier's run. Ken was a little disappointed with himself for being so captivated, and at the same time, unable to defy the temptation to gaze upon something so otherworldly, so out of place.
At 3:33 the courier whisp would come, drop off the package, and leave.
The package was always wrapped in brown paper and secured with clear packing tape, or what at first looked like that. Its actual shape was indeterminable; it could be any one of five (or fifty?) shapes at any moment. It slipped and slid in his vision, not holding still long enough for him to really see what it was, even though he knew that in a way, it was as stationary as it could be. It was like trying to see his reflection in boiling water. When the courier got to the wall he dropped the package into it, right through the brick.
When he saw this happen for the first time he was floored and full of questions. He saw the texture of the wall from where he was sitting, could see the brick and the individual particles of cement making it up and knew there was no opening there, no trapdoor. And what was in the package? Why was it being dropped off? Where was it going? What use did immaterial people have for the post?
The next week he came back not expecting to see the courier but the exact same thing happened. He checked his watch and it was eerily close to the same time last week. A little after 3:30. So he started coming other days than Saturday. He didn't say anything to Rebecca, told her he was going to the library. He'd actually tried the library a few times in his early days watching the whisps, but they didn't seem to hang around books or the people who were likely to be reading them.
Again, around 3:30 - 3:33 to be exact, the courier showed up and dropped a multidimensional payload through the solid wall and went on its way.
Now that he had a target time, Ken went out for smaller observation trips.
He waited extra long before he got up to walk the four blocks back to his house and his wife, waited to see just what kind of thing would come to collect the package that had been left for it. But nothing came, and the next week the little man was back, wearing clothes that were different from the first but just as loud. Still no one noticed him, and again he dropped a brown package covered in packing tape into the invisible hole in the wall. After a week of this, Ken stopped trying to see who would check for the package, even though he had a suspicion that if he just stayed long enough one night that he’d see it. After the sixth day, when he’d stayed until half past nine, he decided he was being foolish. Nothing out of the ordinary appeared, and Rebecca had left his dinner, cold and uneaten, on the kitchen table before going to bed. He slept on the couch that night, his old bones aching from the odd positions his dreams folded his body into. In the morning he felt even more foolish, because during the night he’d dreamed of the other side of the wall, and seen a dark man walk up to a mailbox and remove a package. He’d spent all this time looking for any sort of being that would retrieve what the little man left, only to realize that the retrieval point was likely in a place he couldn't see.
He ate his breakfast and apologized to Rebecca, who was still not so happy, and promised her that he’d be back at four from now on, just like before. He walked to the station and kept his watch, cracked skin at the corners of his mouth folding up into a little grin when the slight man inexplicably arrived at the same time he always did. His unnoticeable friend. And, it seemed to Ken, that to the little man he was unnoticeable as well. An invisible, impotent eye placed benignly behind a newspaper on a bench no one else ever used. It was his role and somehow, Ken was content with that.
After hundreds of days of watching the same thing occur at the same time, he started to notice littler things. He noticed the way the air crackled with energy as the sound of feet on pavement softened ever so slightly. He noticed the way travelers held themselves a little tighter as the time came. Above all, he noticed a tingling in the tips of his fingers, and how they shook as he held the newspaper.
None of those things happened today. At first he thought he was mistaken, that he was expecting the signs of the courier’s arrival early, but he checked his watch. The minute hand was resting in the gap between the thirty-second and thirty-third notch on the watch face. The second hand was rounding the giant six at the bottom. Something’s wrong, he thought.
His stomach dipped. He could feel his heartbeat. Sluggish, like an old horse. Ken knew the man wouldn’t be on time, wouldn’t even be a minute late. He had an image of a long arm reaching out of the wall where the slot must be and sweeping from side to side, looking for the daily delivery. It had claws, and its skin was boiled and marked with pox. Little black hairs swimming out through a skin of congealed pus and dandruff. The image transformed Ken’s unease into something slightly deeper. Who just walked over my grave? He looked around. No courier whisp. He stood up sharply and forced his old bones to move. He had to look at the wall. Today, today there would be a slot. A hole. Something.
Of course there wasn’t. He tapped a few bricks with the back of his middle knuckle. He rested the cane against the wall. He put his head to the wall, his ear, and listened. He chewed his lip, eyes closed. He thought. There’s a hole in this wall. Right here. I just can’t see it. I just can’t see it yet. He opened his eyes. He found the cane and put it into his left hand. He turned.
The courier whisp stood there. In its hands, a package vibrated.
“You’re late,” Ken said.
The whisp’s eyes wide eyes widened. Its lips pulled back into a snarl of fear. Its skin started to to pale, and the loud colors of his clothes began to fade. What had been a tropical mixture of greens and blues and yellows became some smeared brand of brown. It was a haggard demon, three or so feet in height. It shook its head, blinking and swallowing fast, and then it spoke.
“My lord.” Its voice was in Ken’s head. He winced. The demon said nothing else. Its eyes rolled up into its head and it fell back, dropping to the floor in a heap. The package swam out of its hands.
Ken stood staring at the pile of flesh and clothing for a long moment, mouth open, hands placed in front of him in a position that might, at another time, be used to communicate the idea of calm, caution.
The little whisp was dead. The color of its flesh dripped off the way it had dripped from it’s clothing, the way its flesh was dripping from its bones even now. Like pine sap from a severed limb. The bulges and hollows that formed the horrible sea of migrating flesh made Ken want to close his eyes. He felt if he didn’t he might go blind.
But Ken didn’t close his eyes. He simply passed his gaze over the dead heap on the train station floor and rested it on the package.
It lay on the cool concrete, all sides facing up. Ken squinted at it, trying to trace its outline. He couldn’t. All at once, the package was every possible shape. A line, a flat square, a box, a cylinder, a sphere. All at once, all of its sides were inside out, edges facing this way and that, vertices vibrating and undulating into and out of existence.
The mangled mess of clothes and flesh and whatever passed for bone in the whisp's world was oozing directly into the concrete, the whole mass squeezing itself through microscopic pores in the rocky surface. Whatever magic the thing held when it delivered its daily package continued working after its death, because Ken heard no unfamiliar sounds in the station. He saw no one break step, no one shooting any curious glances at him or his dead thing. No one else could see. No one else would see.
Was he responsible for whatever had just happened here? He felt no real regret, not then, just a sense of unreality that coated his acceptance. He had killed the bright-colored postman. ‘My lord,’ it had said. To him? An apology?
The wet spot on the ground had almost completely disappeared, taking with it the sickly sweet smell of curdling milk and rotting apples. The package, however, remained where it was, as powerfully visible as it had been minutes before.
He felt his legs go hot, and then numb. His fingers twitched. A cold, wet finger of anxiety made its way up his spine.
It’s not yours.
Ken walked through his front door. Rebecca sat waiting in the living room, arms crossed and reading glasses pushed up onto her head. They looked at each other for a moment, then Ken smiled.
“Well don’t you look the picture? There’s my wife.” He took a step toward her.
“Stop.”
“What is it, my darling?” He grinned, pouring all the charm he had into the one expression.
“Kenneth. It’s after six. Another twenty minutes and night would have knocked you over the head.”
Ken nodded. “So sorry. I fell asleep. One of the security guards had to come by and poke me. I was confused, too. Dreamed I’d already walked home, that you made your meatloaf. And my oh my. It was good.”
Rebecca’s expression had softened somewhat, into a harsh sort of amusement. “Well. I suppose that’s all right. But if you’ve started falling asleep, maybe it’s time you should give it a rest for a while. You can dream about my meatloaf at home, you know that.”
He nodded. “I’ll give it a thought. I’m going to visit my study for a bit. What is that I smell, anyway? It’s not meatloaf.”
She turned back to the kitchen and he started down the hall. “Lemon chicken.”
“My favorite,” he said, and pulled the door shut behind him. He hadn’t liked lying, but it wasn’t like he could tell her the truth. Not about the station, and not about her chicken.
He pulled the package from under his shirt. It had been hard to carry, heavy and unwieldy, like a bag of running water. He’d had to stop and catch his breath every minute or so, and appreciate the whisp’s strength. The four blocks had taken him more than an hour. More than a few pedestrians had stopped to see if he was all right, and he was sure this was justified; he must have looked like a man who had outlived his body.
He put the package under his study desk and stood there, looking at it. He would have to put it aside, until later.
He barely tasted the chicken, barely said anything to his wife. That was all right this time, because she was preoccupied with the television news. And then one of those singing shows came on, and they sat together to watch. Rebecca had been a singer in her younger days, with a beautiful voice. Her voice was one of the reasons he’d married her. As a young man he’d often lay in bed at night and imagine he could hear her singing to him, calling him to her. Almost the same way he felt now, on the sofa. Only the voice belonged to the package, and this siren’s song felt dangerous. Suppose he opened the package and it killed him? The whisp at the station had expired with ridiculous ease. The consequences of his meeting with it could run both ways.
The dance show finished up, turning out so the voting public kicked off Rebecca’s favorite dancer.
"America wouldn't know a dancer if she did a naked pirhouette in their living room!"
Ken nodded, then pulled an old issue of Reader’s Digest from the pile of magazines on the lampstand. He flipped it open and pretended to read, nodding slightly and chewing on his lower lip, trying to look thoughtful.
“I know you don’t care, Kenneth, but these are real people. These are their real dreams getting crushed, and not for any good reason. Popularity. It’s all a popularity contest.”
"I know that. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just...it’s a television show.”
“Not for them! And not for me. I used to be a dancer, too, you know. A song and dance girl. If these kinds of shows had been around when I was young, well. I might not have ended up where I did.”
“Something wrong with where you ended up?”
“Some days I think so. I’m married to a man who’s married to a train station. Tell me if that doesn’t sound unfair.”
He might have otherwise tried to placate her, to rise and comfort her, because this wasn’t about the dancing show. It was about him. But the package was drilling little holes in the back of his head and he couldn’t be bothered. She would get over it. He was impatient for her to go to bed. So he didn’t say anything.
She left the room in a huff, and he pretended to read for a good five minutes more, even bothering to turn the pages every so often. In his head, the package was being opened over and over again, and inside...he couldn’t imagine what was inside. Something bright. Something terrible. Something from the under layer. The whisp lair. He could hear her getting ready for bed in the other room. She was making a point of everything, doing it all so he could hear. Pulling open and shutting drawers, running water, walking so that her heels hit the bathroom tile like rubber mallets. Aggravation, that old call and response temptation. This time he wouldn’t bite. Wouldn’t stand up suddenly and yell out, “Quiet that noise, Rebecca!” He had more important things to worry about.
He would use a knife. He’d cut on the outside of it, careful not to stab into the thing in case whatever was inside could be damaged by stabbing. A serrated knife, then. He’d cut a seam, then grab hold of each side and peel it back, ripping the covering and letting the thing fall out. But he’d do it on the ground, so that it wouldn’t be damaged by the fall. Whatever was inside might roll out. Slide out. Pour out. He’d lay some newspaper, just in case. And then what? Once it was out, what would he do? He’d have some trash bags handy in case it was dangerous, and then he’d have to get rid of it somehow.
The bedroom door slammed shut. She was getting into bed. Knowing Rebecca, she’d lay there for an hour or more, steeling herself against sleep. If he snuck in and tried to roll up next to her, she’d make him sleep on the couch. He was better off out here, with the Reader’s Digest and the television. To be safe, he should wait until he was sure she’d fallen asleep, and then get to the package. Yes, that would be safe. He put down the Digest and peeled himself from the couch. He went to the kitchen and started inspecting knives. This one would do. This one, too. He took four knives and a hand towel to wrap them in. He went beneath the sink and pulled out two heavy black trash bags, wincing each time they crinkled. She wouldn’t come out to see what he was doing, she was too proud for that, but he knew she was listening just the same. He picked the newspaper from the train station up from the counter and tucked it under his arm. Then he went to his study and closed the door as quietly as he could. He flipped the light switch.
The package had moved from where he’d left it, wriggling out from under the desk into the open. It vibrated wildly, pulsating and changing shape faster than he could make out. He should wait, it would be safe to wait, but now that he was here with the knives and the trash bags and the package, he couldn’t imagine waiting. So what if she heard him - what would she do? Nothing. She might ask him in the morning what all the noise was, but she wouldn’t get out of bed. He wasn’t going to wait. Ken sat on the floor Indian style, spreading the newspaper in front of him. The knives he placed to the side, and felt for all the world as if he were about to carve a pumpkin.
He reached for the package, catching it by a corner and dragging it onto the newspaper. It moved even more now, if that were possible, as if it could tell what Ken intended. He wouldn’t be able to cut it like this - his eyes would betray him, he’d do the wrong thing. A moment passed and he decided he’d have to do it with his eyes closed, by touch. He picked up the smallest of the knives he’d brought with him and practiced against the fabric of his sweatshirt. The end of the blade was here, his hand was here, and this is how hard he’d have to press.
It was time. He closed his eyes and took the package in his hands, feeling it squirm. With his left hand he held it down, and with his right he brought the knife. The blade found resistance, and the package bucked against it. He held firm, and the serrated edges seemed to dig in by themselves. There, was that deep enough? He’d try it. He pulled the blade toward him, holding firm against the container, hoping it was slicing the thing open. Then he’d gone the whole length of it. He put aside the knife and opened his eyes.
The slice was deep enough, it seemed, to cut through the outer layer of the package. The cardboard layer, if there could be any kind of analogy. Beneath it, there was something else, a kind of padding. It was thick and gel-like, and somewhat see-through. He went for a different knife, but then whatever was inside started to push against the seam. Rising up from inside, he could see two tiny fists punch at the opening, struggling against the padding to get free. The fists were human, more than human. They belonged to infant hands. There was a child in the package, and it was trapped.
Ken sat with his mouth open, unsure of what to do. His mind was blank, and the only thing left of him was eyes. The knife lay impotent in his hand, and something inside of him was trying to get out, echoing what it saw. Let it out, let it out, let it out. Ken didn’t move. The fists pumped, softly at first, and then harder and harder. The padding wouldn’t hold, was in fact already beginning to rip apart. Don’t let it out, don’t let it out.
Then one of the fists tore through, gasping into the study with a distinctly wet POP. The hole got bigger, little arms pulling the seam apart just as Ken had imagined he would do, but from the outside.
A face appeared, small and scrunched with eyes shut tight, mouth sucking at the air. It pulled itself free of the package, sliding onto the newspaper and laying there, panting. The package’s writhing became more free-form, and now Ken could see that it was inside out, and inside out again, getting smaller all the time. Then the package was gone.
The baby didn’t have any belly button, and it was covered in what looked like glowing petroleum jelly. Demonic afterbirth. Otherwise it looked perfectly normal to Ken. A newborn, human baby. A white baby. He took the towel he’d carried the knives in and covered it, feeling its warmth as he did so. It was a real child, and willingly or not, he had just become its keeper. Ken’s mind spun. He didn’t know what he had expected, but it hadn’t been this. He thought back to his bench at the train station, to the little brightly-colored man and the package he kept on delivering, day after day. Had they all been children? Had he sat there, thinking himself an observer and allowed such a thing to happen? Ken didn’t want to consider it, but here, now - how could he think otherwise?
He pulled the infant to him, and cradled it in his arms. It reached for him, nuzzling its face into his armpit. He carried it to the bathroom and turned on the faucet, feeling for just the right temperature. The kitchen towel was soaked through with the sticky glowing gel, so he got rid of it. He pulled a fresh towel from the linen closet and dabbed a corner of it into the water. And he started cleaning the white baby.
He fell asleep in the corner reclining chair of his studio, the baby in his arms. It felt heavy, heavier than what he imagined. He closed his eyes and imagined he could see through his eyelids, could see through the dark, and the little thing in his arms glowed a bright white. He must have been dreaming by then, but through his eyelids he saw it open its own. He saw it look at him with eyes that were black, a deeper black than anything else. If he’d been with all his senses, he would have sworn the vision was real, but it was as if only a minute had passed before the sun came busting in through his window and he was waking up.
The baby was no longer in his arms. The door to the study was open. Ken leapt to his feet, fighting spots in his eyes. He lurched into the hallway, trying to make sense of the light. What time was it? Noon, later? He almost started running to the kitchen, but ratcheted back his emotion. He wasn’t the type to panic. At the same time, all he could think of was the baby. Where had it gone? What if it had gotten into something, choked on something, hurt itself? The kitchen was empty. The clock said 11:43. He stood there for a minute, in the middle of the room, turning slowly to his left, letting his eyes fall on whatever they would. It’s not here, it’s not here. Something was keeping him from taking the next step, from finding a plan of action, locking his brain up in a endless loop that coincided with the things he saw over and over again as he kept turning.
Rebecca wasn’t up. That was it. She was always up before him, always in the kitchen rattling things around before ten. Sometimes even before nine, if she was feeling chipper enough. She’d always been a morning person. Ken had spent time on that side of the clock too, but only when he was being paid for it. The questions mounted. Where was the baby? Where was Rebecca? They intertwined in his belly, making a fist of unease behind his ribs. He went to the bedroom door with the same feeling he had the night before, when he’d cut open the package. The feeling of absolute possibility, and this time he was thoroughly terrified.
He opened the door.
She was sleeping flat on her back, and for a moment he imagined she was dead. Then he saw her chest move up and down slowly, barely disturbing the blanket laying over her. The blanket or the baby. It was tucked in next to her like a stuffed animal might be, clutching her body. Its head had erupted with a shock of bright brown curls, and seemed more the size of a toddler than a newborn. It had grown almost two years older in the span of one night. Ken moved closer. Rebecca slept peacefully, a serene look painted on her face. She had always been a wonder to behold as she slept - even now, at her age. Ken squinted. Did she look…older? He bit his lip.
“Rebecca.”
She didn’t respond. He put a hand on her shoulder and rocked her.
“Rebecca, it’s time to wake up.” No response. He shook her harder.
“Rebecca!” Not even the toddler attached to her stirred. That was then he got it. The way it clutched her, like a leech. It was taking something. From his wife to this motherless child, the transfer of something necessary. The demon baby from the under layer was feeding.
“Stop that, you greedy bastard!”
He snatched it up, or tried to, because it was no longer any easy thing. It was so heavy now, so dense. Ken yanked harder.
“You’re killing her...Quit!”
Understanding even in its slumber that its host was being taken from it, the child reacted by clutching at Ken instead. He let it. Looking in its face, he found nothing evil there - nothing that would give him any reason to believe the kid was anything but a kid. It yawned, showing a row of baby teeth that were perfectly human. No fangs, or especially sharp incisors. Just baby teeth. He checked Rebecca for bite marks but found none. He shook her again, calling her name, but she didn’t respond anymore than she did the first three times he’d done it. What if she didn’t wake up? It was his fault for falling asleep, for not watching the baby, keeping it with him. He stared into its face again, remembering his dream. He’d seen it open its eyes, dark black eyes, through his own eyelids. If it opened its eyes now, what would he see? What color, if it woke? That was when, standing in the room beside his wife with the child from the package clutched to him, he understood what he was looking at. The child’s eyes weren’t just closed, weren’t just shut like the shades over a window. No, the kid didn’t even have eyelids in the traditional sense. What it had was one sheet of skin that covered the top half of its face. There were bulges where the eyeballs were, but no way for any flap of skin to open and reveal them. The only holes in its face were its nostrils and its mouth. This realization led to another, one that pumped the fist in his gut against his spine.
It wasn’t sleeping after all.
He tried putting it down in the other room, to see if it would sit still. This was a tough proposition, because it meant leaning over far enough to get the child to hang from him, and then to tear it from his chest. The exertion he put towards this thing, this otherwise simple thing, was incredible. He didn’t feel like an ex-football player at all, didn’t feel like anything but a weak old man. And when it finally came free, and he set it on the floor near the big chair, it sat and looked at him. Stared right through the skin on its face and regarded him with an expression that Ken equated with a kind of deep emotional pain. It fostered in him a feeling of pity, and it was only out of pure scientific curiosity that he kept himself from reaching for the child again. What would happen if he left it? What would it do? It wasted little time in picking itself up into a sort of wobbling tripod of tiny limbs, and then it was walking. Not on all fours, but on two legs, in a herky-jerky mechanical simulation of human locomotion. And then it started to run. Toward the bedroom. Ken had an urge to intercept it, to cut it off before it got there, but the door was closed. Surely that would stop it - it didn’t last night - and if it didn’t, he wanted to see how it got through.
He wasn’t disappointed. It ran full smack into the door, but instead of hitting and bouncing off, got half-stuck in it like the door wasn’t anything but an upright pile of caramel, and then started moving its arms in a pinwheel motion, like it was trying to swim through. And then there was a foot melting through, and then all Ken saw was the door again. He yanked it open and managed to get to the child just before it got to the edge of the bed. He didn’t need to see how it would climb up - however it happened it was less important than keeping the thing off his wife. He grabbed it around the middle, and the child spun like a cat to face him, and then clutch him. He would be its keeper, its nourishment, until he could figure what to do with it. And hopefully by then he wouldn’t be comatose or dead.
Ken had precious little time to lose. He could already feel the parasite’s effect on him. But what to do with it? He’d have to take it back to the wall. Maybe one of the things would be there, one of the little whisps, the little demon men. They would take it from him. And if not? If not, he didn’t know. At least it would take him instead of Rebecca.
The child weighed more already, and seemed to be growing moment by moment, but too slow to catch by looking. He wouldn’t make it if he tried walking, would most likely topple somewhere along the way as he tried to keep his balance with the toddler and his cane. Driving, then.
He hadn’t driven the car in almost four years - Rebecca was in charge of groceries, and took him to all of his appointments. Ken had a scare one night, when he’d mistaken a green light for a yellow, and slowed down enough so that a truck behind him had to jam its brakes and ended up swerving into the oncoming lane of traffic. There was a crash, a lot of yelling and thank the Lord everyone was all right, but Ken knew it had been his fault. His eyesight was no longer what it was. He didn’t trust himself behind the wheel.
The child fed off his anxiety, redoubling its growth as Ken looked for the keys. He tried to calm himself down. They were there, on the rack. His wife was steady with her patterns, and this time he was grateful.
Behind the wheel he drowsed, nauseous. He put the sedan in gear and pulled out of the driveway, trying not to kick the pedals too hard. He successfully avoided a cyclist, who flipped him off anyway, and then dropped his foot to the floor. He was at the train station in less than four minutes, and already the toddler had grown to the size of a six-year-old. Its skin was changing color as well, from the porcelain white it had been when he’d pulled it from the package to a Mediterranean olive-like color. Ken didn’t have the energy to think about it. He staggered out of the door and into the train station, where several people didn’t bother glancing at him. He was jogging, or trying to, afraid that if he kept to walking he would simply collapse. He got to the bench where he liked to sit and fought the urge to take a break. If he rested now he would die.
At the wall he saw something he’d never seen before. An inner part of him had been hoping for it, that he’d be able to see the slot, or the door to the other side. It was small and square, probably only three and a half feet tall. At the top was a rectangular slot, and below that was a round hole. He lurched to the wall and plunged his hand into the hole. There was a bar inside, and he grappled with it, pulling. The door began to open, but it was held in place by an immense amount of friction. Sweat poured from Ken like a wrung-out rag, and the child clung to him ever-tighter. Finally it came open. Ken crouched, wondering if he’d ever be able to stand again.
“That guy’s got a kid!”
He looked back, weary. A white man in a white button-down shirt and tie was pointing at him.
“That old guy’s stealing someone’s kid!”
Security guards charged him, keys jangling at their waists. “We’ve got an abduction!” one of them shouted into his walkie. Another one pulled something from his belt. A gun.
Ken raised his hands. “It’s not me! You know me!”
“Get that kid away from him!”
Were he alone, Ken might have forgotten all about the package slot in the wall, and given into the panic he felt. But the child had already been reaching back into the doorway and with an immense show of strength, tossed the old black man into the darkness.
They fell at length.
There was no light, and Ken knew that he shouldn’t be able to see anything, but he could. He watched as the tiny pin of light that had been his entrance into this new darkness became indistinguishable. He twisted around, rotating his shoulders first and then his hips, so he was no longer falling backwards. If the landing came now he would break it all. The darkness gave way to walls that sloped in slightly from all sides. The walls rushing past him made up some kind of chute - a package chute. His brain sent signals to his arms, and he flailed them wildly, grabbing at any hold they might find. But then the chute was opening outward again, and there was nothing to touch. Ken tugged at the boy clinging to him, but the demon thing only gripped tighter. All of the strength went out of the old man, and he passed out.
Next he was being stabbed. In the back, just beneath his shoulder blade. He felt his breath go out of his chest, and came awake all at once, to his son, now in his early twenties.
“You didn’t want me,” the man said. “I will always live in the shadows with no name.”
“I’m sorry,” Ken said. It was the last thing he would say.
Rebecca awoke sweaty and disoriented. It was dark somehow - had she slept so little? Her bones ached. She sat up, and even that was a struggle. Ken’s spot was cold and empty. She was confused, and a slight tremor made its way into her normally steady heartbeat.
“Kenny?”
She got up and started toward the bathroom. Used to traveling the short distance in the dark, she held her arm out only as a force of habit. When it found that space occupied also by what felt like warm skin, she started.
“Oh!” She felt out for it again, and felt the strong biceps of her husband.
“You scared me, Kenny. Oh dear, you’re shivering. Come to bed, would you? It’s all right about earlier. I’m not mad, I just want you to hold me.” She led her him to bed and got in. She kissed him. He didn’t say anything, and as much as she wanted to believe everything was all right, she worried. She touched a switch on the bedside lamp, and turned over. Her husband had his eyes closed already, and his breathing was deep. He held something out to her, which she took. It was a package, rectangular in shape and about the size of two shoe boxes. It was covered in brown paper and kept tied with twine.
“A present?” Her husband nodded into her arm. “Oh, you didn’t have to. It was just a little disagreement. I shouldn’t have been so hard on you - I know how much you love sitting at that station. I just feel like you forget who your wife is every once in a while.”
She looked at the package again, and wondered what might be inside.
“Oh, what’s the use in waiting? I’ll open it now.” She got up for the scissors, which she kept in the kitchen drawer under the phone. On her way out of the bedroom, she took one last look at Ken, bathed in the yellow light of the bedside lamp. He looks like he did forty years ago. So young. Later, as she cut the strings, she remembered he hadn’t opened his eyes to see her unwrap his present.
Why, then, did it feel like he was watching?
It took a whole minute of staring in the mirror for real estate agent Matt Garvey to realize he was no longer bald.
“You did it. You dog, you really did it!” He danced in his underwear around the toilet, cradling to his chest a bottle of pills, newly-opened. This one was called Regrowacil.
He picked up the phone to call his ex-wife Jodi, who’d always shamed him for his obsessive search for the right hair product.
“My salon guy swears by it,” he’d say, about some new cream.
“Your salon guy needs to sell you something, it’s not like you’re getting a haircut.” Jodi always knew what to say to make him feel better.
Garvey got her message machine and thought about doing a wacky voice - but she would just think he was drunk. Besides, he hadn’t talked to her in a year or more, and who knows how it would come across if he did that.
He hung up without leaving a message and got a beer from the fridge to celebrate. He’d save the wacky voice for if he actually did get drunk.
He popped open the beer and turned on the news. What he saw made him hollow with despair.
The normally bald television anchor was wide-eyed below a bushy mullet and talking fast. ”-hair growth rates are doubling, tripling all around the world! Everyone’s affected, nobody knows what it means or when it’ll end! I’ll stay with you, folks, but know that this reporter’s head grows heavier with each passing moment.”
Garvey barked a curse and threw his beer across the room. Then he went to get another one.
An hour later he walked to the bank, tipsy. It was a nice day, the first in almost three months, but he was jaded. What had seemed like a blessing at first had just been a collective curse. The sponge on his head grew heavier, itchier, and when he scratched it sweat poured down his face. “Put me in the chair now,” he thought out loud. “I’m ready.”
He didn’t mean it. But he was pissed. He'd been on top for a moment, only to find he was really at the bottom with everyone else. But he had an idea.
The people on the street were all hippies. Grizzly Adams and his fifty twin brothers passed him, most with fingers plunged greedily into the thick of their beards, tugging, as the hair on their heads pushed itself out like play-doh in a squeezer.
At the bank, the sight was even stranger. Men in suits looked like lead singers, like surfer bums, like samurai. Some of them were getting it in their heads to tie the mess up with rope, but the knot would sink with new growth and ten minutes later it had to happen all over again.
“Everything in my checking and savings, please. Cash.”
The acne kid at the window swam through his beard to complete the transaction.
Garvey kept the news on at home, and the panic they were selling gave him an idea. He used his own old scissors to chop his floor-brillo off and drove across town to the Buy It All and bought their stock of scissors and hair trimmers. Then he leased one of his own real estate properties, a little storefront between a used bookstore and a sushi restaurant.
On Monday, after a whirlwind of work, he opened his makeshift barber shop to the public.
In twenty minutes there was a line out the door, and the only thing stopping Garvey from being rich was the speed at which he could shear.
He’d gotten ahead of the crisis, and gotten a head of hair out of the deal as well. He thought of phoning Jodi just to rub it in, but she was probably dealing with her own hair.
A month later the sun was out all the time. Hair grew twice-as-fast as the thrice-as-fast it had before. It grew on dead people too, and murders were being solved left and right, as tendrils and tufts led investigators down wells and through sewers. Habeus too many corpus, Garvey remembered thinking when he saw this on the news, and nowhere to put them. Cemeteries were being dug up from the inside as hair on skulls grew too voluminous for the coffins and strands crept their way up to the surface like some species of morbid daisy. Groundskeepers with weed-whackers went at the growth with gusto, but there was more than one incident of a cemetery employee getting his own hair caught in the hungry buzzing machines and meeting an end that way. So finally the hair was left alone, and cemeteries became just hairy plains, each hill a descendent of the headstone beneath.
It was scary times, but he could only worry about himself, and sometimes Jodi, when he thought of her.
Every morning Garvey woke up in a new blanket of Irish scruff, and had to cut it off with the heaviest-duty pair of scissors he still had, a rubber-gripped spring-loaded gnashing-tearing-shearing contraption he’d special ordered from the internet.
One morning, as he pulled together the last lock and cut, the scissors broke apart and fell, joining their bisected brothers among the shaggy carpet made of past follicles. He picked up the morning’s pile and walked with it bundled in his arms to the road, where he dumped it into the trash.
An elderly neighbor was doing the same in her own driveway when one of the flimsier trash bins down the road received a gust of wind and went end-up, spilling a threaded mass of blond strands of hair ten meters long into the avenue. It fell there, swirling in the wind like cotton candy until it formed a sort of great albino tumbleweed and began to make its way toward them.
His neighbor, who had been emptying her trash can just stood there, unable to move. Garvey knocked her out of the way just as the killer hairball passed. It ran a red light and knocked into a black sports utility vehicle in the intersection. The SUV rocked on two wheels then came back down, accelerating forward unharmed. Garvey was breathing a sigh of relief when a convertible hit the hair blob head-on and was propelled upward, spinning. All Garvey could see of the driver was his hair, a bright orange flag that caught on the traffic signal sign and ripped the poor man’s head off.
Things were getting out of control.
Two months after the hair had started to grow, nobody drove anywhere. Garvey had already sold his car to buy scissors, then replaced it with a bike. It felt a lot better to have a bike and not be able to ride it than it would to have a car and not be able to drive it. You couldn’t, because there weren’t roads anymore. There was only hair. Scratchy, velvety, fine, voluminous, pubic, nose and ear, beard and back hair. Living and dead hair, cat and dog hair. The sun was out every day, warming the everywhere piles, and the bodies of the homeless stank through, gurbling burps of sweetness that attracted flies and beetles. People’s vehicles didn’t run anymore. There was hair in the engines, tied around the axles, pinning tires to their chassies. The internet was choked off, and soon the news didn’t play anymore either. Pretty soon the only source of insight he had was from his own thoughts.
He weathered it well, running his barber shop during the day and at night tinkering in the basement with tools, making a better scissor. He was inventing. He fed his hair through guide-loops into a bucket of acid in another room, so he didn’t breathe the fumes except for when he was replacing the solution (it got diluted with hair after about an hour). Acid was only the latest solution - before this he’d used his hair to power his house, feeding it into the furnace and treating it like a steam engine, so he could power everything. But burning hair in such a large scale bothered the neighbors. They waded over, and demanded that he stop. The dark-haired woman he’d saved told him he was single-handedly destroying the rest of the ozone layer.
“Besides,” she said, “it smells worse than that guy who was coming around asking for food last week.” That man was dead and buried under a bed of hair in the dark-haired woman’s front yard. She hadn’t fed him, and now it was too late. He’d have called the cops on her if the cell towers still worked, if the police still even patrolled.
He told her to go away and resolved to burn hair in smaller batches while he worked on his scissors. He’d almost perfected them by then. They were double-jointed, so that even the weakest child would be able to cut through the thickest braid. They were notched, designed to pull strands into evenly-spaced cutting areas and neatly slice through. Everlasting shears he thought of them, although that was probably wishful thinking. There was probably nothing of the sort.
The futility of it all got him in a bad mood and there was no beer. He’d have to go barter for some. He neutralized the rest of his acid and dumped it down the sink.
By the third month, barber was the only occupation worth having, and Garvey was the only barber worth going to. He’d constructed an empire around his “everlasting” shears, become the most important man in the state, in the time zone. People needed him. He kept the design of the shears to himself, and hired a team of barbers to shear the unwashed masses as they approached. They dropped to their knees and prayed to him, and their hair was hauled off and dumped into lakes of acid. People came from all around, wading through hair for hundreds of miles, eating nothing but flies and beetles. When the reached Garvey’s kingdom and felt how his shears could take the weight off their shoulders, they worshipped him.
At six months, he released the design of the shears and mass-marketed them across the country, across the world, they wrote songs about him and stamped his face on money.
Garvey sat on his throne and smiled, sipping beer, thinking of Jodi and what she’d say now. His hair was constantly tended to and shorn away by a beautiful naked woman whose own hair was likewise constantly tended and shorn away by more beautiful naked women and so on and so on. It was too good to be true. It might never end.
A few minutes later clouds came and covered the sun and the hair stopped growing.
Garvey looked up from his beer. His eye twitched, and for the first time in a long time, he felt fear.
“We’ve reached the end of your tour, Coach Dean,” Morgan, the Tesla technician said. “We'll make our final stop now - the resting quarters of Heuristic Quarterback Modification 5, or Huey. I think you'll find he has a winning personality and steel and guts, all the things a fine young football-playing man should have," she said, smiling.
Dean smiled back. It was what he’d been waiting all afternoon for - heck, all year for. He was finally going to see his team's new quarterback.
“So, maybe you can tell me,” he said, "I’ve been reading on football tech rumor sites about the improvements you guys made to the model. Features to prevent the kind of thing that happened in the AFC Championship game last year. Last year's model was good, but it cracked right when we needed it most.”
Morgan frowned as they walked. "Well, the government gives us guidelines for how...mechanical a player can be. We can't just modify a knee joint in such a way that it's indestructible - but we have done some redesigns that would make the specific sort of failure Harry experienced would be less likely to occur."
"Good, that's what I was hoping to hear." Dean smiled at passing technicians, men and women in white coats who looked right at home against the curved corridors and vaulted ceilings of the company's artificial intelligence research and player development wing.
"You know, I watched that game," Morgan went on, clearing her throat. "It was a shame your team lost, we were all rooting for our boy. And forgive me for saying so, but it seemed like you could have taken him out earlier. At one point during the first quarter I and the others here watching could tell his knee joint needed repair. You noticed too, right? You have a technician on staff, don't you? If you had taken him out and attended to the issue, he'd still be around to help your team." His tour guide's voice rose in pitch and quavered, her scolding tone sharpened with emotion.
Dean spread his hands. "Hey, okay. I’m sensing some hurt feelings here. Yeah? And I can’t say I’m not responsible. Mistakes were made. Harry paid the price. I’m sorry. We should have done a better job with him. And yeah, I'll take responsibility for what happened. Leaving him in seemed like the only way to win."
Morgan’s lips curled. She seemed unconvinced and upset, almost angry, even. "Do you know what happened to Harry after the playoff loss?" she asked.
"Truthfully I don't." Dean said. "We returned him, and after that I don't know." He was incredulous. Of all the things he thought he'd experience here today, he hadn't expected a lecture.
Morgan looked down. Her eyebrows furrowed. “Perhaps you caught me earlier when I said our football quarterback prototypes are fragile. Harry, after losing the game and his leg, went into a spiral of sadness and severe depression you'd only find in someone diagnosed with severe depression. He disassociated from his friends here, he stopped talking, stopped responding to any of the stimulae he'd loved growing up. At that point what happened could only be described as a regression, or a downgrading."
“He got sad and couldn't play football anymore?” he asked, trying not to laugh.
Morgan swallowed.
"He stopped being alive," she choked out. "Regression is the robotics equivalent of brain death in humans. Harry in essence became a calculator."
Dean closed his mouth.
"I had no idea. Wow.”
They were both silent, then Dean thought of something. ”There was no way to save him? You don’t have his brain backed up somewhere?”
"Oh, Mr. Dean, you misunderstand. I think, on the highest level you misunderstand. The whole thing forced us to take a long hard look at the program and our business ethics. Our technicians spend so much time with these personalities, building them, teaching them, interacting with them. It's like they're alive, like they’re children. And then...someone like you comes along. Now he's gone. There are no backups."
The rest of the way to the robot's holding quarters, Dean didn't say anything and the tech offered neither apology nor quippy segue.
Finally they were there. "Just treat him like a person, okay?" Morgan said. "Humor us."
"I'll do my best." He looked down.
Morgan opened the door to Huey's room. It was laying in the corner on a bed, lights on its head blinking as it tossed a baseball up and caught it.
"Good morning, Huey," she said, entering the room, but Dean stood back. His stomach dropped when he saw the robot's head swivel his way. He had the same feeling watching spiders walk - not quite revulsion until it started to move, because it moved too well.
"You know what today is, right, Huey?"
The robot caught the ball and didn't throw it again. He swung his legs over the side of his bed and stood up, nodding.
"Of course. Today is my meeting with the coach of the San Diego Rift, Donald Dean, fifty-eight years old. The man you've brought along seems to match the physical description the FBI database provided."
Dean bit his lip. Worse than I thought. Either he's a hacker or they're using him for secret missions. I knew-
"Huey. What did we talk about?" Morgan scolded.
The robot laughed and waved its arms for silence. It put its left hand forward for a shake.
"Just kidding, Coach Dean. I don't have access to FBI files. But I have seen you in streams. And can I just say, you're much larger in person."
Dean knew his face was probably red, but he faked a laugh.
"Nice to - uh - hello there," he got out, shaking Huey's hand. It didn't feel as cold or stiff as he'd expected.
"So, I want to thank you for making the trip up to see me today, I know how busy guys like you are. Gotta keep a whole team of guys together."
"Yeah, it's...something."
"I'm excited to talk about how I can help your team win this year. I've been waiting to meet you for a long, long time."
Dean nodded. "Uh huh."
They followed Morgan into the hallway. Dean tried to keep Huey on the edges of his vision as they walked, tried not to look at him straight on.
"Where to now?" Dean asked. He was hoping Morgan would answer.
"My playpen," Huey said laughing, then dashed forward out of sight. The machine was lithe, he almost couldn't hear it as it loped away.
"What Huey's referring to is the testing facility we've built for him and his eventual brothers," Morgan said.
"Eventual? Don't you have a litter of the things ready to spit out?"
"Oh, we only develop one quarterback at a time. Each artificial intellect needs an attentive group of technicians to nurture and raise it. Current technocortical systems aren't as stable as human brains - emotionally. You won't have any of the concussion-like injuries. The extra care ensures a better experience for him as well as a better team outcome for you."
"The 'extra care' ensures only a couple of the richest teams gets a quarterback," Dean joked.
"I know about supply and demand, Coach Dean. Our Heuristic Quarterback line is all about long term life, and quality of life for our AI. Unfortunately we can't control what goes on beyond these doors." She looked ready to tear up.
"Listen, I want to apologize for everything that happened with Harry. I promise we had no idea about the regression thing. We'll do better this time. Everyone at the San Diego Rift has committed to providing Huey with everything he needs to succeed. We've looked at ourselves too, and we're making changes and moving forward."
"I appreciate that."
They had come to a pair of large metal double doors. "Activity Facility" read the sign above the card reader. Morgan pulled an ID card from her pocket but didn't swipe.
"So you're about to see Huey's playground. We designed this facility to show off Huey's athletic capabilities. You'll have a few minutes to work out with him here, but what he was really hoping was that you'd take him to a real field and work him out there. It's important to him that he be on grass.”
“Grass, got it.”
“I hope you have a good meeting with him. He's a great kid. Maybe you'll feel different after spending some time with him. I’ll be in the room too, but don’t worry, I’ll just be observing. He’s all yours.”
"Thanks." Dean pushed through the door. The "playground" was a large white room with several apparatuses - it reminded Dean of the gyms of his youth. The only thing missing was a trampoline, but he figured Huey weighed half a thousand pounds and would go right through one of those.
Huey was hanging from a bar doing pull-ups. "Check me out, coach."
“Does that even do anything for you?” Dean asked.
Huey dropped from the bar with a clack and came to a crouch in front of him.
“Not really, no.”
“Okay. Well, uh, is there some kind of training program you can run that will show me all your capabilities? Like a tutorial mode or something?”
He looked over at Morgan, motioning a question about a manual. She frowned and shook her head.
Huey laughed. “I’m not really pre-programmed like that. You could just ask me to do some things, and I’ll try my best.”
“Okay, sure. Show me what you can do."
"Anything specific?"
"I'm not sure. Football drills, preferably."
Huey nodded slowly.
"Okay, okay. Well, this place is more suited for me showing you stuff like how fast I can run, or how hard I can throw. Running drills that will look to you like the exact same thing every time. If you want to see me doing football things, making decisions, completing passes, then...you have to put me on a field. With real players."
"So you're not going to do anything."
Huey looked down, an electronic mimic of shame.
"Get me on a real field. Let me play."
Dean sighed. "Fine. I'll get you on a field.” He started walking toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
He turned around. “Be on the field in an hour."
"Which field, Coach?"
"There's a high school about a mile from here, or there was the last time I was here. See if you can figure it out. I have to call the coach and make sure there are guys to play with."
"An hour? Okay, yeah. I can do that, Coach.” Dean could almost hear the smile in its canned voice.
He waved to Morgan on his way out. She smiled back, and he left the playground.
In his truck, he conferenced with the coach of Silicon High, a man named Marty.
"You mean my kids get to ACTUALLY PLAY with next season's quarterback!?"
"That's what I mean, yeah."
"I can have twenty guys on the field in forty-five minutes, does that work?"
"That'll do fine," Dean said, and hung up.
He got himself a rib sandwich from an ice cream stand and sat eating it in the parking lot of the high school.
Players started showing up, the first packed three to a minivan. Dean had forgotten how high school football players were. Average, fat or lanky, none quite able to tone their bodies because none of them had good bodies. Silicon Valley had to take what it could get from its student population.
The kids came up to talk to him, to ask about being a coach, to talk about the AFC game, to look at him with their young eyes. Dean didn't mind; the kids were all losers. Weren't old enough to know any better, which made them the most annoying fans. Maybe one day when they grew up they'd know better.
After 30 minutes Marty arrived, three hundred pounds of enthusiasm, and made the rounds telling the kids what was going on.
Marty came over to Dean. "Man oh man I just want to thank you so much."
"It's my pleasure. Promised my quarterback he'd get to practice with real players."
"Well that's real nice. I can tell you, each one of our kids is just the biggest fan of yours."
"Thanks."
Dean checked his watch and shifted his body language away from the high school coach. Huey was due in about 5 minutes.
The robot showed up carrying a football and what looked like a pair of Rift-themed pajamas. As it came closer Dean saw it was a rubber suit.
"Whoa," the kids were saying, circling around Huey as he came up.
"Hey, you guys. You ready to play some catch?"
"Yeah!"
"I can't believe we get to play with a robot."
"Don't let him tackle you, I hear he's programmed to grind us into meat," one of the lineman said, but one of his teammates cuffed and shushed him.
"Hold up a minute," Huey said. "I'm programmed to grind you into pepperoni. Let's get that straight."
The boys laughed, and Huey tossed the football to one of them.
"I'll be right over, okay?"
They started playing catch amongst themselves and Huey came over to Dean.
"I wanted to show you this. One of my technicians, Brian, made it special for today's interview. I would be proud to wear these colors for you, Coach Dean."
Huey put on the suit. It made him look like a normal player with pads, but techno-sleek.
Dean shrugged. "It's nice, but it's missing all the ads they're going to plaster on you. Netflix. Tumblr. SpaceX. Tesla."
The robot looked down, looking like a fidgety embarrassed human. "It doesn't have to be that way, you know. I just want to be a player like anyone else."
"I don't know if I can make you that promise. Who do you think is paying for you? Ads and revenue. One buys the other, and the other helps us buy you."
"I would come play for you for free. I've been a fan of the Rift ever since I was born; I've watched every game in your history; I've even compiled a list of plays you've used over time and their frequency, depending which group of players are on the field - I know everything about you, coach."
"Listen kid, that's flattering, but if I go home telling my boss that you'd play for us for free, he's not exactly going to be crazy about the fact that we just spent half a billion dollars on you. You don't own you. It's great that you have a personality and everything but we didn't ask for that. We asked for something that could play football really well. We asked for something-"
"Specialized?" Huey supplied.
"-manufactured."
Huey looked away. Dean thought it would cry if it could.
"A few of my technicians were like you," it said. "Not intentionally or anything. They couldn't see me as anything more than electricity running through an avatar, a program mimicking behavior. It makes me want to show them and everyone else like them out there that I'm not everything they think, that I'm just a little bit more than that. So don't think of me as something you can own or buy. Think of me as my own man, a guy with hopes and dreams and goals. Playing for you would fulfill a lot for me."
Dean spread his hands in front of him and smiled. "We can do the free will discussion some more or you can get warmed up with the guys out here, what do you say? I've got to get driving back to San Diego here pretty soon, or I'm not going to make it back for Utopia. And my wife Emily hates to be alone during Utopia." He was about to say something about rubbing her feet, but stopped himself.
"Get on the field with you now, all right? Come on now, let's go." He clapped his hands. He reached for his neck, where a whistle usually hung. It wasn't there now - they'd taken it from him when he'd entered the facility and he'd forgotten to bug the doorman on the way out. He'd gotten caught up.
He made a whistle with two of his fingers jammed into the sides of his mouth.
"Hey guys, we're gonna do a little scrimmage! We're gonna play eight on eight, and Huey's gonna take turns quarterbacking for each team after every score. All right?"
The kids cheered, and Huey bounded toward them.
"GO LONG!" he pantomimed as he threw an imaginary football the length of the field.
Dean had Marty run the scrimmage. The robot had done well. Even as fat and slow as some of these boys were, Huey had provided them all with catchable balls for reasonable gains. He'd eluded the slow tacklers with grace, of course, and moved impressively.
Afterwards the kids all hugged Huey and piled back into their vans and left. Marty shook Dean’s hand and said, “if you ever need an assistant coach,” and Dean smiled politely.
“You’ll be first on my list.”
The sun had traipsed down between the trees at the edge of the field, and drops of dew stained his leather shoes a bleaker brown. Huey and Dean were alone again.
“You did good, real good. I just want to see one more thing.”
“Anything, coach.”
“Run down there, to the end of that end zone. I’ll stand here, at the back of this endzone. And you’ll throw it to me here. I’m not even going to move, but I should be able to catch it. Can you do that?”
"I could injure myself trying to throw that distance. It's windy out here."
“Can you do it?”
Huey looked down.
“I’ll really try.”
Huey turned and ran across the field. Once there, he pantomimed a few throws without letting go of the ball. Then it was in the air, and high. It wobbled, it tumbled, and Dean stepped out of the way just as it found his spot.
Huey bounded over, had been running under the ball during its time in the air, watching it, laughing in disbelief.
"I did it! I did it and it didn't even hurt that much. And that's the best I've ever calculated a momentary pressure system, just because of how tough predictionary fluid dynamics can -"
Dean was smiling widely, and Huey made to hug him.
The man felt around behind Huey’s back, touching just under the robot's occipital ridge. He flicked open a panel with his thumb and pushed down on the button inside.
HEUQB5 fell to its knees for a slow ten seconds, legs hissing as its hydraulics lost pressure.
Dean wrapped the machine with a tarp and bungee cords from the back of his truck and strapped it in.
The San Diego Rift and their fans had a quarterback again.
Being three of me is just about my limit. Sure, like most enthusiasts I've tried four instances and found the experience manageable for a few minutes, but two of me were in similar situations and I had a hard time not mixing everything up. Three is just about my limit. A lot of times it's smart to stick to a smaller number, because after they mold you it's tough to get your money back, and then storage becomes an issue.
Alicia is coming over in about an hour to return a piece of broken art, so I'm cleaning the apartment, two of me, while at the same time I'm driving to pick up toilet paper, paper towels, dishwashing liquid, cat food and cat litter.
I'm the source, and the me that's driving is me1 and I'm at home, and me2 is scrubbing the toilet and I'm standing in the kitchen wondering what else there is to do. Everything's mapped to all of us, by that I mean all of the sensations we feel. My right hand, for instance, is pulling a the fridge door open, gloved and scrubbing a toilet, and on the wheel of my car at the same time. To describe it this way you might ask me "does me1 feel your other two hands" and while technically the answer is yes, me1 is just one of my containers so really I'm the one feeling everything and they're just versions of me. Although if I were the one picking up the cat food it would be just about the same experience, because being three of me is like being three of me no matter which of the three I am. It's okay if this doesn't make a lot of sense, because you probably know what it's like, since most of us have a container or two, or if not we've seen enough in the media about how it works and what it feels like.
The piece of broken art Alicia is coming by to return is one I haven't seen for years. It's fired clay in the shape of a kneeling man, with a leg missing. I broke the leg moving it off the firing shelf and onto the sculpture cart, and I guess I just sort of pulled it down through the shelf instead of pulling it over the edge and then down? So the leg snapped off, and then for some reason I felt so bad about it that I just put the pieces in the cart and left, and didn't come to pick it up again after that. Just a day or two ago I got a call from Alicia telling me she had the thing and wanted to bring it back, since she was going to be in town. All I had to do was say whether or not she should pack it.
I looked her up again, sifted through her recent pictures, imagined having sex with her, and then replied carefully, telling her something like
What a surprise hearing from you again! I remember the piece you described, how odd that you'd run across it so long after our class! I look forward to seeing you and maybe we should catch dinner? Or buy it (haha)?
Let me know if you've figured out what to do about the missing leg.
She responded with a picture of herself smiling. It made me nervous.
I've gotten to the store and finished the toilet, and in the kitchen I've put down the garbage bag and started drinking a beer. This beer is new, a brand I've never tried until about a week ago, it's called Thirsty Genius and this batch has a fruity nutty identity and I can't go more than a few hours without opening myself another one. I have this experience with most beers in my fridge. I’m sure at some point I’ll have a problem but not now, I’m too young.
I park next to a black vehicle where an almond-colored family is loading groceries, or rather the mother is loading and the children are fighting in the backseat and the father is sitting behind the controls staring out the viewport, probably wondering how his life got here. I think that a lot about the people I see, that they're wondering how their life got there. But then people think too much about their lives, because in the end everyone goes to the same place (dies), or gets uploaded and lives in a container on Puerto Cosmos (a planet). Really the only thing anyone should be thinking about is why they don't have enough money to be uploaded, or to have other containers molded, or how to get the money before it's too late.
I start the shower, not because I think Alicia and I will be using the shower, but there's always a chance. Also one of the last things my father told me before he died was that no matter what else I did before a woman came over, cleaning the bathroom mattered a million times more. A few days later we were at a baseball game and I was in the bathroom while my father drove one of his containers to get us some hot dogs. He was concentrating on that when a foul ball found him and killed him where he sat. A few rows up, the container dropped the hot dogs, sort of folded up and fell, sliding down the grandstand and knocking over a beer seller. I was watching the urinal screen as I peed, and saw it all. Incidentally the Cubs lost.
I scrub with the rough side of a sponge dipped in detergent, and watch grime disappear under bubbles through lab-grown eyeballs. I get a big whiff and it's like I go woozy, and because in the kitchen I'm drinking beer and at the supermarket a guy in a scooter is pushing carts past me and reeks of body odor, there's a weird overlap of tastes and smells and I guess it's just one of those situations where you have to step back and reevaluate your current goals.
Next to cat food and cat litter on the list I add condoms.
Then I'm in the store, getting to the beer first. Beer wasn't on the list, but there was only one left in the fridge and I knew I'd want one later. Sometimes when I was nervous or excited I drank, it was a tick. She wouldn't notice. Right? Beer, then toilet paper, then - there was a whole other list of things I was supposed to get, yeah? The bleach I was using was out, wasn't it? More bleach.
I walked to the cleaning aisle and pulled down a jug of Clorox. In the kitchen I was making a tuna sandwich, and in the store I walked to the family planning aisle cradling the bleach jug like a small child. I had the smell of it in my nose because I was cleaning, and also ammonia - which I didn't remember using but - ammonia -
I got woozy in the store, and in the kitchen I put down the knife I was using to spread the tuna and mayo. In the bathroom I felt my eyes go heavy and blood fill my eardrums, then I was falling into the shower, and there was a thud that was probably my right temple striking the soap rack - but I didn't know if I was hearing it from there or from the kitchen.
Actually then it was a lot like I wasn't in the bathroom anymore at all. Not like when you unplug a unit, and it's in the closet and you feel like you're just yourself again, and that thing is in there and in your memories and that's all, but this was sort of like having a dark blank spot where one of my containers used to be. It was a cloying empty space, and I felt like I was able to do less because of it.
It's dead. Your container's dead.
“No, no! I’m gonna be in so much debt.” I stopped making my sandwich and ran into the bathroom. I myself slumped forward into the bathtub. The cleaning products I’d been using, ammonia among them, were scattered in the bottom of the tub, some of the bottles open and contributing each’s own toxic mixture to a bootleg sludge of chemicals. My container’s head was dunked in that mixture.
My face was dissolving away.
“Shit!” I got so mad that I’d done this that I screamed and yelled at the top of my lungs, then finally covered my face so I could re-enter the bathroom to do something with the container.
I had to hide it before she got here, I had to - I had forgotten about my supermarket self. I tapped back in. I was still where I was, just standing there, holding an armful of bleach and other things. I looked around. Some people were staring but not too bad. They were also shopping, which was good. Fine to leave for now.
From the beginning, Gambol had no interest in children. He still didn't.
In Bulgaria, he sighed with disgust as a sack-toting bogey limped out of the forest near a sparsely-populated village. It sang to itself softly, and lamented the death of its maker, Baba Yaga. Too many of them had traits he didn’t need. This one was just another child-scaring bogey. None of the adults in the village paid it any mind, and some of the adolescents spit and threw rocks as it passed.
Pathetic.
“Goodbye, Torbalan.” Gambol pulled open a trapdoor in the dirt and dropped through it. He fell into a great wind, one that pulled at his skin flaps. The tunnel opened up and beneath him was the Earth, big and blue and green. He pointed his being toward Poland, and landed in a murky stream near a cobbled bridge. It was faster to travel this way, through trapdoors, though the falling had put him off at first.
A baby began to cry. Gambol pulled his skin up and walked down the stream toward the bridge.
“Hello Bubak.”
The crying stopped. From the shadows under the bridge drifted a form wreathed in rotten burlap. Its skull was painted with old blood, brown and black with time. It lifted an axe, and Gambol stepped forward. He grappled with it, and with the practiced fingers of his free hand he began to tear its skin, stripping the ragged flesh like bark from a tree. Bubak went limp, and Gambol stitched the skin onto his forearm, where it made a sleeve.
He was bits Japanese Namahage, Finnish Groke, and Pugot Mamu from the Phillipines. Mamu had been his favorite, a headless shapeshifter who’d ground men into sausage as it fed them into it’s neck hole. Gambol had stitched them all into himself, trophies and bearers of power. They would start to fear him now, the others - especially those with something to give.
He pulled a trapdoor through the stream-bottom and dropped in, water following. Below him the Earth turned, and somewhere it would rain for a few seconds. He guided his being toward Texas, and landed in a farmyard. He dragged his skin behind a bale of hay and slept.
Gambol was the first and only American bogey, truth be told.
One genuine, gosh-to-golly, spirits-be-praised, melting pot.
“Billy, Chocolate chip pancakes?” her dad asked her from the sink, where he was doing dishes. She sat at the table, her pajama-clad legs crossed under her. She had a box of crayons and was drawing a picture of it.
“Okay,” Billy said, scribbling.
“How come you didn’t sleep in our bed last night? Are you okay being alone?”
“No, I’m still scared in my room.”
“Well then how come? Your mom said you told her there was something wrong with our bed.”
“Not with the bed, just the thing that lives under it.”
“Something lives under our bed?”
“Well I don’t exactly know if it’s alive. But it’s bad. And I could feel it through the mattress.”
“Like the princess and the pea?”
She scribbled harder and shook her head. “Like laying in the snow without clothes.”
“That bad?”
“You and mom should sleep in my room. I don’t think it’s a nice thing. I think it’s a monster.”
“Noted. How many pancakes you want?”
“Two.”
The girl knew Gambol was there. It didn’t bother him. Her parents, even if they believed her, wouldn’t believe in him. They weren’t naive enough, or they were too naive. Either way, he was a house bogey now, and they were his.
“Can you take her to school? I don’t feel well.”
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“I’m sure I’ll feel better in no time, I’m just exhausted and my head is pounding.”
“Do you need me to call in for you?”
“That would be so good.”
“Okay honey.”
On the way to school Billy talked to her mom.
“I think Dad’s sick because of the monster.”
“I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational reason for why your father is sick.”
“Yeah, I guess. Do you feel sick?”
“Not really.”
She thought, and while she hadn’t been sick she had woken up in the middle of the night and hadn’t wanted to stay in bed.
“I had some nightmares though.”
“About what?”
“I can’t remember now…”
She wouldn’t tell Billy this, but it was why she had slept on the couch that morning. She made a mental note to have the bedroom checked out, because even if there was no monster, maybe there was something else. Mold, or something.
"Are you excited about your grandparents coming?"
"They are?"
"They called today, said they have this weekend to travel and wanted to come in to see us."
"Saturday? That's five days away."
"If you don't count Saturday it's only four and if you don't count tonight it's only 3 1/2"
"Okay mom. But you can't just not count things, that's how story problems get done wrong."
"Well even if it is five days, this way you'll have time to plan what you want to do when they're here."
“I’m excited. I'm gonna go to my room now and read."
The girl’s mom felt a finger of cold on her back and was momentarily clenched by fear.
"Billy."
"Yeah?"
"If you don't want to read alone you could come out here and keep me company."
She could hear the trembling warble in her own voice and wondered if Billy could.
“That's okay mom, I don't like distractions while I'm reading and you hum all the time."
"Okay honey."
She didn't know what she was afraid of. The sun was streaming through the open blinds and sparkle brilliantly glinting off tiny dust particles in the air. She was two steps away from being outside on one of the nicest days of the year.
Her feet on the tile were sweaty and when she took her first step towards the door and felt like a thin layer of mucus came between her foot and the floor, but it must've only been condensation. Her foot slid forward and out from underneath her, jamming her toes into the door. Her other leg pivoted back and she fell to on her knee, foot slipping on the ball and bending her toes back landing her in some painful half straddle.
She let out a yelp at first and then tried to catch her breath while she took stock of herself in this new position. Both feet hurt extremely terribly. Her knee hurt worse. She breathed deeply trying to get every bit of the pain out in her breathing, just like she'd been taught in Lamaze class. She felt like screaming but wouldn't.
“Mom?" Billy’s voice from the other room.
She took a moment to collect yourself mentally and put all their energy into sounding normal.
“What is it Billy?"
“Can you stop humming? It's really annoying and I can hear it even from in here"
"I'm not-"
Something licked her neck. Not on the back of it where she'd felt the cold finger of fear, but this time a tongue that snake itself up between her breasts and over her collarbone. Before making a run up her trachea. There was nothing there that she could see but she could feel it plain as anything.
This time she did scream, disgusted and terrified.
Bully came running out.
"Mom?"
"I'm okay."
She was doing a version of the splits on the tile floor. Her daughter pulled her up.
"I just slipped. I'll be okay."
Some things here. Maybe some intercalary description of their farm house.
Gambol was about to snap the cornered barn cat's neck when the girl walked into the open door leading to the horse stalls and called for it.
"Here, kitty. Here, kitty."
The cat meowed and stretched its back upward to receive the tips of fingertips as a brush. Were he another, more pathetic bogey he would have still snapped the animal's neck, then swooped in to gather the girl as she screamed and weeped so as to pull as much of her fear from her as they could. They were greedy, most bogeys, and tactless. Gambol didn't care for the fear of children. It tasted too electric to him, too sour. His own kind gave him much more pleasure to consume, and adults - a delicacy incomparable to any other. (more their fear than themselves)
So he let the cat live and spread himself think into the corner of the barn, and waited.
"What is your name?" The girl asked. Gambol didn't say anything and neither did the cat.f It weaved and rubbed through her legs with a sleepy purr and she tickled under its chin.
"I know you're here. I know you're doing things to my family."
Gambol felt a great weave of annoyance. It was talking to him. This little girl had decided there was something nefarious going on, and had the nerve to confront the barn about ti in case whatever was doing things was in the barn. But it couldn't really know he was there, could it?
"I'd be willing to gamble you'll show yourself to me soon."
Gambol felt lit up with fear, anger, and paranoia. It had said its name. Did it know it had? Was it a coincidence? Of course it was, but tat the same time how could it be? What had he stumbled into here? And yet he couldn't leave, he was halfway through the two hosts - if he left now he would weaken and they would regain their full health.
The girl got up and walked out of the barn with the cat in her arms, raising it up over her right shoulder where she nuzzled its face with her cheek. "Silly booger man won't come out to talk."
Did he really need to worry about this now? Was he in danger? What was the child if it wasn't human? The only creatures Gamble know could see boogey men are other bogeys and ghosts and whisps. What else?
No, all of his senses told him the child was a child, and therefor he wanted nothing to do with her. He would ignore her and continue about his plan with the parents. Once eh'd drained them if the girl at that point had some way to oppose him he would be the most powerful he'd been in centuries.
"My name is Billy." The girl said as she opened the front door to her house and stepped inside.
Gambol reconsidered dismissing her for now, and came to the same conclusion. She was a child and he was into deterred or tempted or interested. Nor would a child prevent him from pulling the last of her father from this world.
"What you doing out there, kiddo?" her dad asked her.
"Playing make believe. There's a new imaginary friend I've been talking to."
"Oh, have you?"
"Yeah dad, I told you about this yesterday. I think it's what's making you sick."
Her father looked away really fast, then juggled his hands in hiss lap while he looked around. Then his hand wen to the back of his neck and he coughed. "I'm not getting sick, Billy, you know that. I just had a bad week, things have just been a little rougher than usual and I'm just going through something. I'm sure ti's fine."
"Okay dad."
"Did you get that cat out of the barn?"
"Yeah."
"Well I don’t think he can be in the house, you're gonna have to put him back."
"Can I just for a little while? He's not safe out there right now."
"Okay but keep him in a cardboard box and if he starts to pee, carry him outside immediately, you got me? I wouldn't want your mother to come home to cat pee in her carpets."
"Thanks dad."
"Love you Billy."
As the family slept Gambol went to the parent;'s window and looked in. He stood between a tall bush and a crank pane and as he leaned further in he could feel the edges of the window pulling out to him. He let himself be pulled in and then he was being pushed through the window edges. He pooled on the master bedroom floor and slowly rolled his way under the bed, where he didn't bother remaking his shape. Instead he twined upward from the middle, reaching through the bed until he found Billy's dad, and wrapped the tendrils of his being around the man's heart. The body shuddered for a moment but then struggled on, sleeping through the takeover.
The girl’s mother wasn't in bed at all. Gambol was slightly dismayed that this was the case, ideally when they slept together he could collect from them both at the same time, and now she was nowhere to be sensed. How was that? He thought he could sense the girl but he didn't care ab out that.
The man woke up with a start. Gambol loosened his grip for the moment. The man's heart beat so hard, so fast, and Gambol was giddy to collect all the fear and despair that the man was experiencing, but wary to give himself away. Still, he couldn't resist. He dipped in, he drank.
"Is she right?" The man asked in the empty air, the night that was so cold in his room for some reason, his breath could bee seen clearly inside the moonlit but bush-obstructed window.
"Is she right that there's something making me sick? Some kind of being or entity that wants me to die a slow death? Is it here now? Hello?"
Dammit, the girl. The girl had wasted his opportunity. He'd have to go find the mother and feed on her and return when the man wasn't so suspicious. If he decided to fight, the girl might - no, he wasn't supposed to be worrying about the girl.
"If you're here now, please. Don't take any more from me. I can't stand it."
Gambol had, however, just come to the opposite conclusion. The girl couldn't be allowed to stand in his way, not from getting what he needed. He latched onto the man, and pulled at his soul.
"I'm here." he told the man. "It won't hurt, and I"ll be here."
Billy's dad screamed and screamed and Gambol could barely hold himself open wide enough to collect all of it. It was gluttonous.
Billy woke and flung herself from her bed, knowing nothing but the alarm noise in her ears wanting she'd been trained to respond to. What was it? Then it made sense - her father was screaming his head off in his room.
The thing was attacking him!
She ran from her room to the bathroom and got a cup of water. Then she flung open her parent's door and saw her father screaming under the covers, and she ran forward about to fling water on him. But then she remembered something, and instead of pouring it on him she poured it under the bed, where it seemed to hiss and evaporate very quickly as though the carpet was boiling. Billy imagined she could hear the thing scream, and her father instantly went limp and threw his head back. Then he looked at Billy and started laughing.
"You, you should...you were right. There's something here, and it's killing me and it may be hurting your mom."
"It's still under your bed. I think I just hurt it."
"What's that on the wall?"
A shadow had formed under the windowsill, darker than it had been. Then there was a slight sucking sound from the window.
"It's leaving!"
They had seen Gambol. What did this mean? They had seen him, and evidence of him, they'd watched him seep out the window pane, wounded. Had he ever been wounded like this before? He couldn't remember. But he'd had centuries of cannibalizing other bogeys and sucking the life from adult humans. He should be at his strongest now, not so weakened by a glass of water that he had to seep out with his tail between his proverbial legs.
As Gambol slunk away into the night it scolded itself, and ended up stumbling upon Billy's mother.
She was getting out of the truck with groceries. The overhead light above the seats was the only thing that was allowing her to see. She was all bandaged up, presumably with items from the store, and now she was pulling a rigid fabric bag from the back and ti was filled with toilet paper and other things like that.
Gambol got under the truck.
Billy's mom pushed the garage door opener but nothing happened. She did ti several times, thinking she’d have to flash her headlights at the house to get Billy to notice. Her husband was most likely already asleep at this point. Instead, she thought she'd pick up the cell phone and call. She dialed, and it rang three times before a breathless little girl’s voice, Billy, answered. “Hello?”
"Billy, it's your mom. I'm outside and I need you to open the garage door. The garage door opener isn't working."
"Oh. Oh, yeah, I can do that...mom, you're out front?"
"Yeah, in the driveway with groceries. Tell your dad to open the door for me if it doesn't work, he'll have to lift it - ... actually, tell you what I'll just leave it parked out here for the night."
”I’ll open the door, you don't want to stay out there."
"Why's that?"
"It'll tell you when I see you. But basically there's a boogey man trying to suck the life out of dad and we scared him out of your room and now he's outside with you."
Billy's mom breathed in. It all sounded so ridiculous, that if she hadn't had her run-in with the thing and feel how it had done things to her, cranked her over and up like a doll, that she would have laughed and assumed her husband had come up with some way to rid Billy's room from imaginary monsters and ghosts. But he had no energy for that. he really did seem like he was being drawn from and it wasn't a joke.
The garage door opened, and she flipped her headlights on and drove inside.
She tapped the garage door button again and this time it worked, closing the door behind her. The inner door tot he left was opened and Billy poked her head out. "Good." she said.she ran
"You're alone."
"That's nice to hear. And Billy, why do you look like you're wide awake? Have you been drinking Mountain Dew again?"
"No, it tried to kill dad and I had to stop it."
"What?"
"I woke up because dad was screaming and I ran to his room. It was feeding off him."
“Go home.”
A great nephew I've never met just showed up in my high-rise. Well, he said he was my great nephew. His clothes were pretty torn. Said he'd just been running from a bunch of religious zealots in the early eighties; they'd thought he was some sort of demon.
I don't know if if this man was crazy, but I figured I'd play along since I'm mostly indifferent when it comes to...well, everything. So I asked him, calmly and politely, would he get off my carpet so I could put it into its cleaning cycle. You leave blood too long on a carpet without letting it clean itself, it stays and then the carpet goes into depression. It's never happened to me or anyone I know, but the Mead showed a story about it once.
So then this young fellow tells me he's my great nephew, and he's from twenty sixty-five. I don't know if I believe him; maybe I do, the security's pretty tight in my flat and I bio-locked the door behind me when I came in.
So you time travel, I say. He laughs. No one calls it that in twenty sixty-five apparently. It's a moot term. Then what do you call it? The kid says some word in a language I've never heard before. I nod. All right. So you're from the future. You came here why.
He shrugs. You are Alfred Funk, right? The Alfred Funk? I shrug too. I'm the only Alfred Funk I know.
I ask him if he wants a beer and he doesn't laugh. Beer is apparently still relevant in twenty sixty-five. He drinks the beer and says he's got somewhere to be.
I wonder if he'll come back. Maybe I've got something to ask him.
Fuck. That was my last beer.
I spent nearly all day today in the Mead. There's something timeless about that portroom, the way it wraps you in its warm black bath. The chair that molds to your body, taps into your momentary comfort needs. I could stay in the same position forever and not get sore. It was never like this with any of the older models, and I'm glad I invested the extra hundred thousand for this year's.
Whoever invented the Mead should have been knighted. Maybe he was, before the royal family was dissolved. It may be the single most influential product this century. A viewing area that will let you see any of the Mead stations in three full dimensions, and at any virtual size you'd ever want. When it was first invented the view was enough. People bought the thing and went inside, transfixed by the clarity and resolution of the hyperdimensional images presented to them. Oh, and the sound quality was quite amazing as well. Now, though. A body can sit in a Mead portroom and just close his eyes, letting the stations rotate by as accompanying smells massage his nostrils. I do that a lot these days, station rotation by smell to find what I'd like to view, and today was no exceptioin. However, I never thought I'd be in there all day. Maybe it I'll suggest that it inform me of the time in the future.
Maybe it's good for me, and maybe it's rotting my brain. That whole debate they had about the television thirty years ago. But it helps me forget how lonely I am, and I guess that's good.
I wish my great-nephew would visit again. I definitely have questions.
Maybe Florence would like to know she has children in the future. No, if she wants that piece of information, she's going to have to vidme.
Marilyn came over for dinner. I didn't tell her about what happened the other day. I mean, I could have, but Marilyn isn't prone to believe in extranormal occurrences. Besides, it would probably have killed any chance I had for sex. (Which, it turns out, is still alive and kicking. She got up to change positions and turned her hair a brilliant silver. I love when she does that.)
Dinner was prepared as usual, but with an emphasis on the "romantic," which I don't think my Culinartiste' quite understands yet. It's for myself and a woman, I tell it, and it's still confused. A date, I say. I swear appliances used to know more than they do now.
She fell asleep all tangled in my sheets, and her snoring woke the cleaning bot that lives under the bed. With the robot's whirring and her making so much noise...there wasn't a chance I was going to be able to sleep.
I walked to the Mead and poked my head in, ordered up some news that interested me for a moment. A shuttle carrying pieces for the space station went down, but everyone got out all right. A Florida congressman was having a fit about all the money he'd lost.
Settling myself in the chair, I turned on the classical. Would you like any particular composer, mister Funk? I tell it AutoCompose is fine. And I listen, watching the three dimensional representation of the sad dirge it has decided to create. In the waves and motions I see myself, a man afloat, unsure of his surroundings. Eventually my eyes close, and I sleep.
I don't know who I'm supposed to be, but the dream I just had freaked the hell out of me. Part of it must have been from being in the Mead...I never dream like this.
Anyway, in my dream. I wasn't myself, I was sort of watching myself if you know what I mean. A floating observer. I was watching myself in a snowstorm, struggling through drifts with my head down, icicles forming all over my body. I didn't feel the cold, but I knew that...well it feels weird to think of it like this, but I knew that my body, that hewas going to die. My, his hair was buzzed down to the skin, and he wasn't wearing anything in the way of clothing.
My body stepped over a drift and it collapsed downward, just like one of the jungle traps you always see on the old vids from last century. And then I lost myself. There was just a dark hole where I had fallen through the ice. I knew it was me falling, but in the dream I was watching, you know? So I shouldn't have felt like I was falling, the terror that went with it. But I did.
That's when I woke up. And the strangest thing about it, too. The only thing going through my head was what that kid said. "You're Alfred Funk, right? The Alfred Funk?"
What am I in the future? What do I do?
I get up and Marilyn's gone. There's a note on the door, looks like she might have been angry.
What, you can't bear to sleep in the same bed you had me in? Don't call, Alfred.
This is going to be a good day. I can feel it.
I called Marilyn today. She saw it was me and disconnected. I just stood there for like ten seconds, unsure of what to do, or what to feel. How am I supposed to act? Women have always been hard for me, and I think it's because they're the most complicated. The smallest things push them away, and when you finally reel them back again you wonder if all that effort was even worth it. I mean, the sex is good and there's always something about having a real live woman to share your presence with. But really, though. Sometimes I wonder if that whole side of the species has an overreaction gene. Maybe Marilyn isn't the girl for me, I thought today, but I called her anyway. I haven't got anything better.
I woke up today around two o'clock, with another headache. This one, however, was of the hangover persuasion. Half a bottle of White Russian sat capped on my bedside table. I've always been kind of embarrassed over my capacity for alcohol; it wasn't even three quarters full when I started. I got out of bed and had my Culinartiste' make me some eggs while I popped idly into the Mead and ordered up some news. Something about unrest overseas, in the Middle East, and I stopped paying attention. When the only news is about unrest in the desert, nothing important's happening in the world. I'm waiting for the next big thing to happen, something huge like the 2012 French Revolution or that city in China that got nuked by accident four years ago. I need something to hold my attention, to make me feelsomething. Like a person.
And I would have just walked around my flat all day in the nude like that, but I had to call Marilyn.
Well, that wasn't the only reason. Is it odd that I'm worried about being caught in the buff by bloody time travelers from the future? I'm starting to think maybe I made the whole thing up to keep myself entertained.
"Temporal dislocation."
I ordered seven books about it today. They'll be here tomorrow; I wonder if I'm obsessed?
posted by adam holwerda at 10:08 pm 0 comments links to this post
I left the high-rise today. I had to; something about walking around the flat for that long looking at all the same things was giving me a headache.
Now I'm on the bus.
It's kind of a long story. I took the elevatube down the first floor and tipped the doorbot with a knock on his tin noggin. It's an old joke between us; I guess because he doesn't forget anyone who walks through his door and I get along easier with bots than with people. People are too much work. Anyway, I walked through the door and all at once two things hit me. The first thing was the smell; back when I was a kid and smog wasn't so bad a bunch of congressmen passed a bunch of laws to limit air pollution and for a while even told everyone that it was getting better, but it was a lie. Tell it to the street people, you know?
Which brings me to the second thing. The street people. A group of them is usually hunkered outside every big living building, especially those they know rich people live in. Which meant there were more outside my building than most others. Usually I'm really good with the street people, and today I figured they'd leave me alone once they knew I wasn't carrying any pocket money. But this one guy jogged along behind me while I walked, and he was being real forward, yelling at me to say how bad a person I was that I couldn't appreciate how those in the low places had to live. Which pissed me off real bad, because one of my best friends from college ended up living on the streets, and I helped him whenever I could. This guy kept going on, said he knew I had money, and he was going to stay with me until I proved to him I was really not carrying. Like I don't know what he'd have done with the money had I given it to him. You want to help someone on the streets, you don't give him money. Finally, as I turned to face the guy with a fist I'd balled up, he dropped off, throwing his hands in the air. All right, man, he said. And I never looked back.
Through the rest of the walk I kept my eyes on the ground and pasted some vile expression on my face. I passed a few people having animated conversations with themselves, and that cheered me up a little bit. When I was a kid, talking to yourself meant you were a crazy. Now, though, you never know. Is it her grandmother? Boyfriend? Or is she just bonafide street person crazy?
I've always wondered about getting an implant like that, but I'm not too good with human to human communication, like I've said.
Then my legs got tired and I hopped on the bus. I guess it wasn't too long of a story.
I feel like I've stumbled into something much deeper and more complicated than I ever thought anything could be. The box arrived this morning; I pulled the tab on the side and it popped open, the odor that accompanies old books escaping.
There's not a single recent book here. They're all from either before the turn of the century or just after, giving me the feeling I'm not learning about anything anyone cares about anymore. After reading the introduction of one book, Are We Then Yet? by Cliff Pelter, I was starting to get an idea why. This was a book published in the mid-nineteen-nineties, and it spent a lot of time putting forth arguments by several philosophers and physicists, all of which deal with the assumption that advanced cultures of the future will eventually succeed in inventing the 'time machine.' The problem I have with this is the complete failure to experiment. How will we as a society ever create the thing we're relying on those in the future to create? It's probably the only case of generational procrastination I've ever witnessed.
Dreaming is claustrophobic, a manic representation of my muddled thoughts. It's a lot at first, a desperate dance of theories and paradoxes. I wake up screaming in frustration four times before I finally find it. Honest to goodness, warm, thoughtless sleep.
I wake up and it's Tuesday. I've slept twenty-seven hours, and my body has become glued in an awkward position to the bed. My muscles, sore and weak from disuse, protest weakly as I creak out of bed and stumble, blearily, to the urinal. My bladder emptied, I look around my flat, once more noticing the blinking green light on the Mead. I take three steps toward it and my vision goes dark from the bottom up, and my knees are hitting the tile, and my arms try to keep my head from doing the same. I don't move for the longest time, waiting for my vision to clear and my nausea to recede. Mentally I'm checking myself; not hurt too bad.
"Funk," I say to myself. An old grade-school joke.
I get up slowly, using the counter to keep me upright. The Culinartiste' whirs as I tell it I need something that'll give me strength and wake me up. Gloopy green slop drops into the cup and I tip it back into my mouth, careful not to breathe until I've swallowed it all. I see on the Mead that it's Tuesday, and I groan. What happened to Monday? That's a whole day I'll never get back. Then, realizing what I'm thinking, I burst out laughing.
"Well, that's one way to time travel!"
I'm feeling better now. I duck into the Mead and hit the message button, blinking up into the projection area to see who would vid me. But no face appears. I frown, finally noticing the small line of text hovering near the bottom of the projection area.
I can't be with you anymore, Alfred. It's not your fault; I've just grown apart from you. Please don't call. - Marilyn.
I read it again. The bitch didn't even bother to vid me. I shrug, pretending to myself that I don't care. And as depression drapes itself around my shoulders I start scanning through the Mead stations.
It's something to do, to keep my fingers moving. But I'm staring; looking through images that won't even process in my mind.
I won't call. If there's one thing I am for Marilyn, it's obedient.
posted by adam holwerda at 11:55 pm 0 comments links to this post
I haven't slept in three days. Every time I close my eyes they roll around in my head while I agonize, analyze and reject possibilities. Time travel as we know it is possible, and has been around as long as life on this planet. Since organisms could move, and observers could watch them move, time has been relative. According to Einstein, and his theory of Special Relativity, a man in a car moving somewhere near the speed of light will age, to an observer not moving at all, at a much slower rate. Time would appear to have slowed down, and yet the man in the car would notice nothing out of the ordinary. He'd tie his shoe and half a century would go by, all of the people he knew growing older and dying, being replaced by their reproductions. In essence, it's already possible to travel to the future. But there's no going back.
Yet.
I rip open another protein bar and the wrapper flutters to the floor, joining its many brothers. A light on the outside of the Mead blinks; I have a message. I chew and swallow, not moving from my spot on the bed.
I know time travel exists. Unless I'm crazy, (and based on the way I look right now you might be able to convince me I am) and I don't think I am; I saw a man from the future, one who claimed to be a relation to me. And I saw him disappear, blipping out of existance with my last beer. So it's possible. You can travel to the past. Why am I bothering, if I know it happens in the future? I have proof, certainty. Things none of these philosphers or physicists had. Someone discovers time travel.
So why can't it be me?
I've spent the last few days hating my own existence, wandering from one end of the flat to the other, refusing to change clothes or shower. I unplugged the Mead, and spent most of my time in a chair reading. I've never really liked reading, and I still don't. No matter how many pages you get through, how many concepts you understand, it never feels like anything gets done. It's just a thing to do, I guess, when nothing else in your life feels right and you can almost hear the ticking of time. Each minute that passes is another one you've wasted. Each breath you take is one closer to your last. I made it a point not to sleep just because I was supposed to; if I was going to feel like this I wanted to do it my own way, not follow some societal rule that says people should sleep when it's dark out. Reading like that, for twenty hours straight, did something to my eyes, made them hard and hot. I passed out with a book in my lap, and when my sore neck woke me I was still holding it open like that, only now it had a puddle of drool running down between the pages. I threw it on the ground and walked myself to the other room, where I collapsed on my bed. I blinked for a while, trying to see if the effort would make my eyes any better, but it didn't. Shrugging off my clothes and sliding beneath the sheets I let my body go and shortly thereafter my mind followed.
Sleep does wonders for depression. The next morning, or whenever it was that I woke up (I had the Mead disconnected and the windows blocked and had no other way to tell time) I felt a hell of a lot better. I avoided the chair I'd made a depressive bubble around and threw myself in the shower, thinking that a good run of water down my back should do me some good, wake me up, get the juices flowing. Something had to change; I knew that. I felt...I felt like things were different now, and I had to adapt. The depression, while useful for what it was, could not be who I became. And in the shower is where it happened.
I emerged a free man, observant of the world and its laws but no longer subject to them. Worry did not have its hold on me, nor did pressure, nor did expectation. And, most important, nor did time. I could be what I was, do what I would, and live for myself. Guilt had slid off me like the soap suds; self-loathing had dissolved with the dirt on my body.
Because in the shower I made a decision. Nothing matters, in the end. Nothing is changed. The universe is still the universe, and nothing you or anyone else can do will change that. Everything dies, in the end. Every form of life shines for just an instant in the cosmic consciousness, and is then snuffed and replaced with cold, with death. Someone else might find this depressing. Might find it sad.
All I know is that I'm free.
It feels like everything's happened to me. And I haven't had time to stop, to sit down and make sense of any of it. Until now. Where I'm at, it's cold. The floors are bare; the dull gray of groundstone. It's night; I know that. The breeze through the holes in the walls is icy, and my clothes are too thin to be any help.
If I'm not crazy, then I've done it.
If I'm not crazy, then I've bent the rules of the universe just enough...to snap me to some other time. I've time traveled.
Wait, though. I need to tell you how it happened.
Just wait.
Well, it's Christmas here. And I see...I never made it back to fill in the gaps in the ten years I've been gone.
Nothing is the same, nothing.
And if you think your world is going to be unchanged, think a little harder. A little harder with a multitude of large explosions thrown in.
We're hanging on, us Americans. But only by a thread, and only by pure luck. It won't be long until we're all dead, some say, but I know better. Because a version of myself from 2025 happened past me in the market and told me something.
Something I can't tell anyone but myself, when I'm from 2025.
The game is changed, Americans. And I'm trying my best to play it in the only way I know how.
To win.
Monica couldn't tell anyone about her job. Her husband thought she worked at a publishing house, because on the check that came every two weeks the block in the top left corner said Little, Brown & Co. and that had always been good enough for him. Monica didn't talk to her husband much anyway, and he never asked about her days at work. She supposed that part of it was good, because what she saw at work every day was so different, so strange, that if she had the slightest inkling that her husband (or anyone, really) wanted to know what was going on in her life every day, she would spill immediately, and subsequently forfeit her position.
She imagined for instance telling someone this: every morning she parked her car three blocks away from the front door of a big office building, walked to the back of a long hallway, stepped into an elevator and pushed four buttons: 4621, her facility access code. The elevator would whir and grind for a couple of minutes, she’d send a text or two and her phone would lose satellite signal, and then when the door finally opened she’d be somewhere she’d never been before. The facility was massive, rolling green hills and forests and lakes and bits of desert and some frozen tundra. When she stepped out and the elevator ascended back into the sky like it was being pulled up with a vending machine claw, until she couldn’t see it anymore. Her first day on the job (more than four years ago) she’d been dropped by a burbling stream, and when the elevator was gone she’d had the distinct feeling that she was actually probably insane. She’d just been walking in the wilderness for so long that she’d imagined she was employed by some strange company that just dropped her from the sky, but of course that wasn’t true. It made more sense that she was nuts, that if someone looked in her head they’d just see a sign that said “Gone Fishin’” That first day she’d followed the stream until it had turned into a little shore and some rapids, and just beyond that a sandbar and a waterfall. That was where she found some bubble people washing, and instead of deciding insanity was for her she worked until the sun went down and the elevator dropped back out of the sky.
Most of those early days she’d had to deal with being utterly lost and alone, but she had a mental map of quite a lot of the place by now. It wasn't perfect and if she found a new and unfamiliar drop location she’d have to consult the overhead simulated night sky and follow constellations that didn't exist in the real sky. Every employee's uniform, which Monica kept in her closet with all her other clothes and which her husband took to mean a publishing outfit or something, tracked the employee and all their locations throughout the facility. The simulation would, as you walked across the facility, make itself the curvature of the earth. In this way a employee could sort of figure out where in the facility here she was. The system was designed this way, and all new hires were told, because employed humans have a tendency to do the same task over and over again and pretend that's their job, but in this facility you always had the same task but were never allowed to do it the same way, simply because the product of the work was meant to be endemic of the entire system and not isolated to a certain amount of observations.
After a certain amount of walking Monica would become aware the her uniform that she was approaching a subject, one of the bubble people. That's when she would clock in and begin her work for the day.
On the off chance Monica saw another employee on her way to observe a subject, she would experience the interesting sensation of wondering whether or not she never met this employee before, because every employee was uniform was equipped to block out any outgoing information such as what your voice sounds like or what your face looks like it would distort and misidentify other employees.
It worked the same way for the bubble people only they seem to simply notice movement or a change in sound level, since they've all had something the facility had given them that simply insured the job the employees had was not one of high-risk or bodily harm.
The whole point was to keep the employees few, the subjects many, and the observations varied
Like today, today she saw a man who looked different from the others. Well the thing was they were all different from each other these bubble people because she supposed there was a mixture of every kind of person represented there
The man she came Hahn was lying on the ground his face in the grass touching himself and taking his fingers into the dirt where she supposed it was soft and warm.
She supposed that perhaps the experiment was an answer linguistics one. Collects all a bunch of people and see if they can communicate without language or without any knowledge of how science works. what was a human in its natural state? Would it be like a monkey or a gorilla? Who knew. Although apes and monkeys were social animals whose intraspecies tendencies seemed crystallized at this point, much of it learned from birth and much of it handed down in the genes.
The man she was watching was rather attractive, his body healthy and son bake, although the light down here was an approximation and not unfiltered sunlight. She suppose that must be an costly experiment as well sort of like how do we take the sunlight and turn it into energy where I can be turned back into sunlight all between a few kilometers of crust. If that was even how deep she was, she didn't think it was possible and yet to think that all of this was under her city all the time seemed equally impossible. It had to be far down enough to where the existence of the facility would not undermine just the nurse in a sinkhole way should something happen. If the place collapse she thought the city would probably be fine. That's why she never worried about it collapsing. Besides how did flight attendants do it rolling their travel cases on board every day knowing that for the next few hours they'll be only a few inches from death, but having survive so many other times that fears seem to hear rational in comparison to the paycheck they'd receive.
She stared at the man and her observations somewhat embarrassed her because she spent a long time looking at his butt and the small of his back and his shoulder blades and the back of his neck and the tone on his arms he just seemed very organic. The lines on him weren’t hard like he worked out in a gym or soft like he had never moved in his life, this was a man who ran when he wanted, climbed when he wanted and was healthy from eating only what he could find, which were berries that, at this point where no more berries than the sunlight was sunlight but the bubble people still put them in their mouths like they got the idea.
Sometimes Monica thought the facility was an experiment more for the behavioral psychologist. Let's see what's at the core of the human psyche, let's see where the most deep-seated of desires and actions come from. What did we have to learn from each other and what could we figure out on our own? What did a human being in its natural habitat look like? What was its nature, such that if you took a squirrel and from birth put it in an isolated habitat and watched it - how would it behave? What things about the squirrel were inherently squirrel and what other things that we recognize about the squirrel now were taught to the squirrel and are passed down to the squirrel over generations and generations? Are we just simply a snapshot of our genetic code at any one point?
Monica imagined that somewhere in a desk in a big folder there was a file that had many of these questions typed out in all capital serif fonts and at the end of the sheaf of papers there was a signature or several signatures and following that a flow of money that probably went higher and deeper than anyone realized, but wasn't that the truth about everything like this? They sign her paycheck, even if it was as little brown and Company, and that was good enough for her, for now.
As she watched the man she felt kind of lucky, like no matter what had happened in the world up till now, she was able to sit here in this moment and observe a natural beautiful creature, one she quite enjoyed looking at, and all she really had to do was sit here and follow him if he did anything and her uniform would sort of record her observations the video tell a link and am memory spikes. Each employee’s encounter with the bubble people it was important to gather and gauge their reactions as well, although Monica couldn't see why. Maybe they just wanted to know how a baseline future city human would react to the base animal, in fear or in all or in many cases lost. The little people didn't often wear clothes and when they did it was makeshift cloth sore around plants and often these claws were worn around her head not their genitals which to Monica meant the loin-clothed Adam and Eve from the Expulsion From the Garden of Eden must have been wishful thinking.
Without language the bubble people rarely banded together except for the odd orgy and bonfire in which they often burned their headdresses. The fires were caused by "lightning," which just meant every once in a while an employee in some higher capacity somewhere pressed a button. A fire would start, the bubble people would mosey over from wherever they had just been, and they'd all work together to make the fire bigger, throwing whatever they could find into the blaze. Then they'd all have sex with each other. Witnessing one of these was rare, and a real treat, at least for her.
Now, as she watched from behind the bushes, the man she’d been tracking started to touch himself. Casually at first and then with more vigor. Monica felt a blush rise on her cheeks, and involuntarily stepped back.
It made a noise. She also had come slightly out of true with her hiding place, so the man who’d been quietly and casually stroking himself made eye contact with her.
She looked away immediately, felt herself flush even more, then looked back. He was still looking at her in the eye, and didn’t seem to be bothered by the intrusion. He cocked his head and seemed to be looking at her outfit, her suit, but kept at his task as though it was something that had to be done.
My brain flickered on, a fluorescent bulb somehow intact.
Pain came then, waves of it, throbbing from every joint and muscle as they came awake, explosions of nerves firing off warning signals. Get away, get somewhere safe, but the warning had come too late. I struggled to open my eyes, both crusted shut and swollen, the ringing buzz in my busted eardrums giving way to the sounds of motors, muffled voices, and a slow creak. There was a bite to the air. I was outside, and I needed help.
I got my right eye open, then the left, seeing only a blurry dark. I was piled against a wall in an alley. Numbly I looked into the black fog until it began to clear, noticing subtle movement down the alley. As my eyes adjusted to the ambient light I connected the slow creak to a man with a funny hat pulling a wagon. The wagon was filled with boxes. The funny hat man turned his head my way, and I saw the yellow glint of his eyes for a moment before he disappeared into the dark.
I sat there, and I closed my eyes again. After maybe five minutes I managed to pull myself to my feet, swaying in place until I tried to lift my left foot. Instead of taking a step, I fell sideways into a stack of crates. They went over and I went with them, gasping and rolling in the gravel like I was wrapped in carpet. I was bound somehow, and there was a new pain in my right ear. I touched it, or whatever the ear was now - taught and long, pulled like taffy and tied to a familiar tightly-woven elastic fabric.
My suspenders. Which meant whatever happened to me, I had either been coming home from work or on my way there. I couldn’t remember.
From my ear, the suspender lassoed my head three times, cutting into the skin in my cheeks and forehead like cheese under thin wire, and ran from my neck down my back and up through my legs, where it had been clinched it to the zipper of my patchwork pants.
The other suspender was a tourniquet around my left thigh, slicing into the back of my right knee before winding its way up my back and tangling in my hair. My oversized red work shoes had been severed at the midpoint, as well as my socks, and my toes protruded, unhurt but purple. A red foam ball that should have been glued to my face was instead stuffed between my toes.
I was a mess.
"You remember me? "
A voice in the night. I twisted my head all around and saw nothing but shadows.
The shadows moved, and I did half-remember something. Something terrible.
"Oh dear," I said, and then I was lifted from the rubble by a huge hand that bunched the front of my suit in a massive ball of fabric, skin and hair. I dangled several feet off the ground, the hand pulling me face to face with my tormentor. The creature seemed to breathe, and I expected a smell - but air only went in.
"Did I mention? Great show - I laughed, I cried.”
Its voice, low and raspy, came from a dark hollow.
"Can you laugh? Laugh for me."
A neon EXIT sign across the street flickered on, bright red tracing the night.
Features of my attacker started to come out - relief in a world of gray flatness, and though I saw clearly for the first time, I couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. With each flicker of light his image was stamped into the night like a Super 8 film playing ultra slow.
Its face was still hidden, but the thing it wore on its head I'll never forget.
A menagerie of gears, pulleys, hinges and all manner of mechanical ornamentation balanced there. It was a hat of sorts, a cone of living, steaming complexity. A tiny metal man in a tiny metal cart emerged from a hole and rode a thin rail around the headgear and back in, tiny arms raised in anticipation of some hidden drop. Inside the machine I heard the sound of gears grinding and then a shrill drilling noise that rattled the nerves in my teeth, followed by a puff of steam from the hole.
I imagined the tiny metal man had just met its maker.
Below the steam machine was the wide brim of the thing’s hat, quarter of an inch thick and curved up at the sides. It wore black robes inlaid with silver designs I would never be able to reproduce, and patterns I've never seen before or since were layered throughout the material with theatrical flair, as though the thing had stepped from the stage of some cosmic opera just moments before.
Finally the neon sign brightened and steadied, and the black hole under the hat let out a phlegm-coated gurgle that could have been a sigh.The corner of its mouth spread and oyster yellow teeth gleamed.
"Make it snappy, Boppo. The show must go on."
I tried to laugh, but it came out in wheezes.
“Heh-oh, heh-oh.”
Then, as though I were a bag of bread under his arm, he walked me out of the alley and down the empty street to a light pole. He hung me by my collar on the sort of hooks they use for stringing rope for parade day. My feet still dangled several feet off the ground but now I finally had a clear view of him.
It may have been a monster, it may have been a demon. It most certainly wasn’t a man.
His face was concealed by an iron mask, gunmetal blue and riveted there like buttons on some ornate riding saddle. Where his eyes would have been were vertical slits cut into the iron, and the mouth was a completely separate construction, lips blue and floating independent of all else. Its long nose was scooped and chiseled to a point like the edge of a knife. As quick as I could take it all in, the mask spun away and I was looking at another face, white this time and spider-web cracked, a shiny Victorian porcelain. The thing’s new face had a dark orange patch over the right eye, rust-colored nose and full lips.
I opened my mouth.
"Stop. Before you make another sound, let's have a look at what's behind door number three."
The second mask spun off and I was looking at yet another face, this one flesh that had been carved into and inked in such great detail that I couldn’t tell what the original color had been. Dark blue spirals intersected with patches of line-work and dot patterns, bright white arrows and astronomical hieroglyphics - the moon at waxing gibbous, stars going nova and rings wrapping planets. The red concentric circles on his dart-board chin accented the deep red of his nose and his lips were black with white glowing dots.
It was this face that again curled a lip and posed those pearly yellows.
"That's all I have for you tonight, kiddies. Remember, next show is at seven, same place. Dress warm, and bring a friend."
The light went out and a hot puff of fetid air blasted me full in the face and I was left alone, swinging on that light pole, waiting for morning or for some kind passerby to find me and cut me down, just a busted-open clown piñata, hanging in the night.
It's been years since that encounter, and I yet can't keep from thinking of it every now and then. Every squirt of water from my breast pocket daisy, every manufactured trip over my size- twenty shoes, every snap of my suspenders to let out a fart reminds me of my time with that other, darker thing.
And when a parent asks me when I'll do the act again, with the balloon animals, and the pies I juggle before catching each, with practiced clumsiness, on my face, when this jolly dad asks will I do it again after the children have eaten and the sun has gone down and the parents are drunk, will I do it just for them if they pay me double, I have to say:
"I'm sorry sir, but the seven-o-clock show has been permanently canceled."
A few more nights like this one and Sábado thought he would starve. He'd be an alley corpse, hiding under some crumpled newspaper or garbage bag. A little boy would find him two weeks from now, chasing a foul ball and finding his mummified husk instead.
Of course, he might not starve at all.
He touched with a fingertip the coin in his pants pocket, then pinched it out. A penny. Someone must have left it in his hand while he slept, sometime between 7 and 10AM, between the bakery and the bus stop.
A penny. May he never again work a day in his life, hallelujah. He spat and put in his pocket.
It had only been a year or two by his count since he himself had looked at the under-life of the city with disgust. And because he'd grown up secretly expecting to be someone, an important man with important things to say, it never bothered him to ignore their polite, deathly pleas for help.
Then there were the years of failed attempts and drug lapses, and his final rock bottom. The slow realization that he'd met their same demise at predictable hands. Now he only felt sorry for them, sorry for himself. They were all like him, people whose other lives hadn't happened.
Sábado shuffled on, tossing the penny hand to hand. If he couldn't scrounge enough to buy some bread, he'd find some other way. He'd steal - eat garbage. He'd done it before and would do it again, but there was nothing enjoyable about any of it.
He tripped. Something was caught on his shoe and didn’t come with him when he stepped. It didn’t give, pulled him back and he would have tumbled if not for a quick hop on his left leg.
“Let go!” he hissed, and then stopped, looking down at his foot to see what it was caught up in.
It was a suit jacket, attached to him by a button that had managed to wedge itself into a hole in the sole of his shoe as he went over.
The button was attached to the end of a sleeve, and the garment pawed at him like a child. He dislodged the button and squinted at the thing it belonged to, which had gone still. In the moonlight the jacket seemed a dark blue, possibly navy, and it was decorated with a series of darker pinstripes. A fancy thing. Attractive.
A rich man's suitcoat, probably.
He shivered a little, presented with this opportunity for warmth, because even in May when the sun warmed the earth so much longer, the nights were still uncomfortable.
He picked the jacket up. It smelled of a type of cologne, something familiar, and it was dry. Only hours ago it had been raining hard, which meant this jacket was a newly lost thing. He considered carrying it, but that would make for even more suspicion than the alternative. Sábado looked around, saw no one, and slipped the jacket on. It fit him, somehow, and it was warm. He started walking again.
His stomach growled, and he thought about ways to get money, and being as he'd tried most of them already, he decided he’d have to sell the jacket. He wasn’t an expert on fancy clothing, but he imagined this jacket had to be at least worth a few dollars. Maybe even a hundred dollars. The saliva glands in his mouth opened up, and for the first time that day he smiled.
He might stay alive a while yet.
Sleep was a hard thing that night, even after he'd squeezed in behind a dumpster and covered himself with paper. He had done his best to find all of the cleaner scraps, unwilling to dirty the jacket anymore than he had to. And then there was the paranoia. Someone would come across his sleeping body, see the jacket, and kill him for it. He might not even wake up. He tried convincing himself that he was invisible here, in this alley, under this paper. He was nervous but somehow having the jacket on comfortedh him.
It didn't work, but eventually sleep came, a subtle uncaring killer of consciousness.
When the vibrating woke him, everything was orange through his eyelids. The garbage in the dumpster, warming, had begun to rot and stink. It was Sunday morning. The vibration happened again, with accompanying sounds - a kind of bell sequence that reminded him of the boy he often saw who made money by hitting glass jars filled with water. He pushed the newspaper off himself and looked around, trying to find the source of the bells, seeing nothing. The back of the dumpster, the crumbling red brick of a laundry building, and dirt.
The vibration happened again. He realized this time it seemed to be coming from him. Sábado sunk his hands into both side pockets of the jacket, his right touching something rectangular, cold and vibrating. He took his hand away, startled, then laughed. The ringing stopped, and when he put his hand back in the pocket, so had the vibrating. He pulled the phone out and put it in front of his face. It was very thin, very shiny. It must have belonged to the man who had lost the coat.
He opened it.
The phone's screen was filled with a box. "One Missed Call," it said, and beneath that, "Lunes. 9:13 a.m." Sábado frowned. It wasn't Monday, it was Sunday. As he held it, the phone bucked in his hand, and the ringing started up again. On the screen he saw a little image of a woman's face. He squinted, but the quality was low. Below the picture it said, "Lunes calling."
He fumbled to stop the ringing and pressed some button on the side. It stopped. Then, from a foot in front of his face, a woman said "Domingo?"
"Domingo, are you there?"
Sábado almost said no, almost told the woman inside the phone that he wasn't Domingo, but there was something in her voice that needed him to say yes. This was an important call. This woman was very upset. And so he said, "Yes, I'm here."
He realized that he would probably not sound like this other man, but he thought of it too late. She was crying now, big gasping sobs.
"What is it," he whispered, hoping that lowering his voice would help disguise him. "What's wrong?"
"It's Ramón," she said, spitting the name like a mouthful of phlegm. "Ra-mon," it came, with all the force and spite he could imagine put into a name.
"We had a fight," she said, enunciating each word as if she might break down and run them all together if she didn't. "We had a fight about you."
The last two words weren't accusatory, instead, her voice lifted when she said the words She loved this Domingo, whoever he was, wherever he'd gone. Sábado didn't know what to say. From her voice, he imagined she was the most beautiful woman in the world.
Maybe he would tell her now that he was someone else, end this charade. I am not really this man Domingo, Sábado imagined himself saying, my name is Sábado and I have no money really and I just happened to find this man's jacket and phone on the sidewalk and I wanted the jacket so badly that I didn't check the pockets.
But of course he said nothing.
"I can't talk long. He knows I call you, that I talk to you. He watches me all the time. I can get away tonight, though. During the show. I will come to the apartment and we will sit and talk about what I can do about him. Will that work for you?"
Sábado didn't think it would. She might show up, but Domingo...well, there was a chance he would be at home. He'd just lost his jacket. But could he say no?
"Yes."
"I must go now, brother. I love you and can hardly wait until tonight."
She hung up. On the screen, her face flashed three times. She was beautiful. A name flashed across the screen: Lunes, Lunes, Lunes.
"Lunes," he breathed. What a coincidence that must be.
Then he thought, brother?
He shrugged. He would keep the phone, in case she called again, but he would sell the jacket. Sell the jacket for a little bit of money to eat.
A peculiar thing started to happen as he walked. The people who saw him didn't whisper to each other, didn't turn the other way. Did he look rich now? Unthreatening? Or maybe they coveted his jacket, jealous. That was good. He might get more money for it than he thought.
There was a hot dog vendor in front of the grocery store, no line, just quietly pumping small puffs of steam into the chill morning air. The vendor stood in front of his motorized cart and smacked his gloved hands together, nodding at him.
"Hot dog?"
Sábado's mouth watered. He sighed, then shook his head and kept walking.
The city began to worsen as he walked, because he was walking down a steep grade of GDP per capita. He saw a child with a small cup and spoon, sitting on a sewer grate. Its teeth were mismatched in color and growing crooked, and when it saw him it got a big charming smile on it's face.
"Please, senor. Tienes algo para mi? Do you have anything for me?"
Sábado shook his head. "No, little friend. You and I are in the same boat."
"Not you, not you! You have money, I can see it. Tienes dinero! Dámelo!"
"Oye, chico. Listen. I have no money. If I had any, I would give you some. I am a begger just like you, living alone on the street. My mother died and my father left me, and I would have died in this city if it weren't for the charity of strangers. This jacket is one I found just last night. It is so beautiful that people may think I am rich. Pero no es la realidad. No tengo dinero. Ver:"
He pulled the penny out of his pants pocket, and held it up. "One penny only."
The child was unimpressed. "You have money, senor. I can see it in your inside pocket. There." He pointed.
Sábado looked. From his chest, there was a slight bulge. He patted it, and then reached into the lining of his jacket to find the pocket's opening. He pulled out a money clip, thick with twenties and plastic cards of all sorts. These items were Domingo's life. He felt guilty, feeling like he should do his best to get the guy back his things...but he couldn't return the money clip or the phone - he'd have to return the jacket as well. And for some reason that was something he just wasn't going to do. People lose things all the time.
And then I deserve the money more than he does
"Here," Sábado said, pulling a crisp twenty from the clip, then another. Then he counted out three more. He put $100 in the child's tiny hands. "Don't sleep outside tonight, okay?"
The boy nodded, eyes wide.
“You can’t be giving me this.”
“I’m giving you that.”
“Thank you sir. What is your name?"
“Domingo."
The boy nodded again and ran off, holding the bills tight to his chest.
Sábado pulled another twenty for himself and began the walk back to the tamale vendor.
"Two tamales, sir. No, three!"
He sat on a streetcorner, eating his tamales. Cars flew by, tourists flowed down the street like bright-colored gods accosted by dim biggars with dirty hands. He knelt down, hands to his face, eating as he'd learned to - like an animal. The first two tamales it seemed he did not even taste, they slid down his throat so fast that all he got from them was a quick sense of his stomach filling. The third he ate more slowly, trying to roll every bit of the corn and sauce around on his toungue, to savor it. He finished and was thirsty.
From another stand he bought a soda, and stood drinking it in the sunlight in one long gulp, Adam's apple moving up and down like the tourists as they bounced past.
The tourists were a parade in Trampos, Americans coming to look at the architecture, the history and antiquity of a real Mexican city just miles from the border. Just as often they snapped pictures of the poor, intrigued by the idea of a poverty this encompassing, and while not often sympathetic they seemed to at least appreciated the manner in which their subjects starved. Add up the bloated bellies, the black teeth, and your story back home just got better. The tourists would give money or they would not, and if they gave it would be to the children, and because of this the children hardly were able to keep what it was they'd be given.
They were employed (enslaved, more often) so the money from Americans came back to the master in return for certain protections. Food was provided, enough to survive, and a child could be kept clear of those who walked the streets with an appetite for young flesh. It was very rarely worth it to run, even with the money made, because a few dollars wasn't enough to last more than a week or two alone. Sábado thought about the little boy he'd given a hundred dollars to. If he'd had a master, a hundred dollars was enough to get clear of him, and Sábado hoped the boy had run.
With the soda finished, he walked several blocks to a park where he'd slept several times. It was small, closed off, and the only people he saw there with regularity were dog-walkers. He sat on a bench near a swingset and opened the money clip.
All in all the money clip now contained: Three hundred and sixty dollars (all in twenties), a membership card to a night-club called the Blue Midnight, and a driver's license. The picture of the man in the driver's license picture was, by all rights, him. Domingo could have been Sábado's twin brother, after a shave and a trim of the hair on his head. He spent extra time with the driver's license, looking into the man's face and reading the name. He was feeling a strange sense of duplicity, of merging, because he more and more thought of himself as Domingo Ramirez, although he shouldn't have. The jacket's former owner had money, and that meant he probably had a nice place to live, a job, a car, and friends. The life Sábado had always wanted. It was too good to be true, and might be still, if the real Domingo was still around. There was a good chance he had only lost the jacket, but in that part of Trampos, anything might have happened. Sábado resolved to find out.
He walked to the address printed on the driver's license, and found himself in front of a tall apartment building in the middle of downtown. He looked around. There were no beggars here; this was the domain of the rich and powerful, and went to the address printed on the driver's license, an apartment building taller than most in the city, and walked in. Several well-dressed men pooled around a wall, opening up little boxes and pulling their mail out. Sábado walked up and squinted, trying to read. Ramirez, Domingo. Apartment 7C. He turned, and walked to the stairs.
"Hey! Hey, Senor Ramirez!"
He almost kept walking, but then realized that the surname of his new alter ego was Ramirez. Sábado turned, half expecting to be tackled, and saw a man with a smile that was wider than his face. A doorman, or a bellhop. Sábado slowly smiled back. He waited for the man to speak, to identify himself, but he didn't. Sábado cleared his throat.
"How are you?"
"Oh I'm very well. Couldn't be a nicer day out, could it? Well, maybe."
Sábado was wringing his hands together, and saw that the smiling man was taking a bemused sort of note of it. He pulled them apart and shoved them in the pockets of his jacket.
"Yes, I guess not. I'm going to..." Sábado said. He gestured behind him, to the stairs.
"Of course you'll be wanting to go upstairs, to your room. I'll just walk you up."
Why, why? Any more time around me and you'll realize I'm not Domingo. But he said, "Right, no problema," and so Sábado and the smiley man walked up the stairs together.
They ended outside of 7C, with Sábado sweating under his jacket. He had expected to show up, find out where Domingo lived, and investigate without being bothered. He hadn't counted on being recognized so instantly. But perhaps it was not so bad. This man thought he was Domingo for real, not some impostor. He couldn't believe his luck.
Sábado tried the door. It was locked. He felt in his pockets.
"I must have lost my key."
The smiling man laughed politely. "Senor Ramirez, you asked me months ago to keep a key for you in case of this very situation. I could tell when you came in that you were confused, that you didn't recognize me." He pulled a long skeleton key from his back pocket and put it into the keyhole. A turn, a push, and the door swung open.
"Oh. Thank you."
"Is there anything more I can help you with?"
"No, no. Thank you again." Sábado turned as if to close the door from the inside. The smiling man put his leg through the opening and took a breath, as if he would like to say something. He was no longer smiling. He now looked concerned.
"Can I just say, senor, that when you left yesterday I did not expect you to return. With Ramón as Ramón is, it would most likely have been better for you if you hadn't."
The leg was gone, and then so was the smiling man. Sábado closed the door slowly, and then locked it. Who is Ramón? He shrugged; he would look around, discover who Domingo was, or what had happened to him, and then he would leave. Hopefully without running into the smiling man again, or Ramón, whoever that was.
He was struck first by the bank of windows covering the whole left of the main living area, angling out and offering a majestic view of his city. The sun was setting. The star tumbled slowly through the atmosphere, bathing the city in cool red. He searched the bathroom, the kitchen, looked through the refrigerator, under the couches and the bed in Domingo's room. Nothing of interest surfaced; either Domingo was very neat, had not been there very long, or he did not possess very many material items. The closet was empty and the walls were bare. In the drawers of the dresser he found a pair of nice black pants with dark gray pinstripes. He switched them for his own.
He took advantage of the large bathroom, showering the filth of his street life away. He dozed with his head against the ceramic tile wall, dreaming that he belonged here. That the thrum of hot water on his skin was his own, and not another man's. When he pulled himself from the shower he was the color of the setting sun, and vapors lifted off him like from an early-morning manhole. He found Domingo's razor and shaved his face, feeling more and more that Domingo didn't exist at all, that this life had been waiting for him all along. His long hair he pulled behind him in a ponytail, and wrapped it with a black rubber band he found in the drawer beneath the sink. He dressed.
Sábado found himself at last in the couch across from the window, watching the darkening sky. He felt in the jacket pockets for all of Domingo's things and laid them on the seat cushion beside him. He felt better; lighter. Eyeing the cell phone he thought of calling Lunes and telling her he had returned, that she could see him now. Then he remembered who he was, and that he should be leaving. The Domingo experiment would have to continue another day.
As he rose to his feet, reaching for the money clip, there came a hard knock on the door.
He stifled the urge to yell anything and instead stood motionless.
"Domingo, it's me - Lunes!" His spine tingled when he heard her voice. He'd forgotten about their meeting, about the promise he'd made as her brother. "Open the door, Domingo. I need to speak to you."
He left the money clip and walked to the door. He turned the lock and pulled the door open. A large angry man stood there. Sábado had almost no time to lay eyes on the woman behind him before he was leveled by a hard shove to the chest. The floor was ceramic tile, and when his head and the tile met there was an unforgiving thud.
"Ramón, you said you wouldn't hurt him! That you just wanted to talk!"
Oh, Ramón, he thought, this is the man I'm supposed to be afraid of. His vision swam, and he tried in earnest to focus on the woman in the open doorway. He couldn't, because a moment later the steel toe of a big brown boot caught him in the face. Should have just left the jacket alone. Now you're going to die. He clenched his eyes shut and heard a scream. Then he heard the door slam.
"Do not worry, chica, there will be talk."
Then an expulsion of bad breath invaded his nostrils as the big man whispered, "Is that not right, my friend?"
"What do you want?" Sábado's voice was even. He'd been beaten before, it no longer made him afraid. Pain was inevitable. He simply wanted to know.
"Here, my friend. Stand." Then Sábado was pulled from the floor by his lapel.
They stared at each other. Finally, the bigger man looked away. "I know about your jacket."
Sábado licked his lips. A fine crust of blood had formed at the corner of his mouth, and it stung as he tasted it.
"I know it's the jacket that is the secret of your success. Since you employed me I've watched you gain nothing but power and respect. And I thought it was because of you, because you were in some way superior. But no; it was the jacket. The jacket that gives you money."
Sábado chuckled. "How silly."
"Yes, of course it is silly! But I have seen it give you thousands of dollars at a time. I have seen you check all of your pockets and find nothing, and ten minutes later come up with a bundle of hundred dollar bills. And for the longest time I never even thought about it. How stupid."
His face scrunched thinking about it, but then he smiled. "It is my jacket now, and it will give me the money. I will buy the cars, oust the club-owners. I will become the leader. And I will not let the secret out like you did."
Sábado considered for a moment. The jacket was still his. "I won't give it to you."
"Then I will not ask for it." Ramón pulled a handgun from his pants and pointed at Sábado's head. Before he could say he was not Domingo, the Ramón had pulled the trigger and Sábado felt a sucking sensation as he was pulled from existence.
Hell was a desert at night, cold and dry. His mouth was full of sand. He laid there for several minutes, confused and unwilling to move. His tongue moved over his teeth and he spit, groaning as he pushed up onto his side. For a moment all he could do was blink into the dark, but then he pulled his right hand out of the dirt and wrapped it around his head. It was whole. He felt his face. It stung and he felt faintly nauseous. His nose was still broken, even here. Wherever he was. That it was Hell still made the most sense. He rolled onto his back and wondered if he should try to get to his feet. The sky was fogged over but even so he could see the moon was full. It dizzied him, and though he was already flat on his back he tried to steady himself against the ground. The thumb of his right hand was caught. On what? The jacket. He still wore it. He might have smiled; it didn't matter - no one was there to see. With his other hand he patted the other pocket, the one on his breast, and he pulled from it a bundle of warm bills. Cackling he threw them in the air and the breeze scattered them into the night. He laughed until he was choking, and then he was a body being shaken against the ground like a rat in a dog's mouth.
He awoke again and by the position of the sun it was almost noon. Perhaps an hour shy. The heat baked his skin and he felt that he was in the midst of a fever. He pulled himself to his feet, slowly and with an itch in the back of his throat like wool. He didn't think about where he was, or why, because it didn't matter. The desert was complete, the same in all directions. When he was a boy his father had taken him into the sea on a small boat and they had drifted for hours until it was not clear which way they'd come. He'd cried then, out of fear for being lost forever, but his father had found them a way back. He didn't remember how. It didn't matter anyway. He was lost forever now, and he had no father and this time he did not cry. The ground was baked clay, hard and flat and his feet didn't leave any sign. There were no birds or trees. Once in a while he saw a tuft of grass, but never any water. The heat made his mind into a waxy melting thing and he pulled his pants and undershirt off to keep cool. The jacket remained on his shoulders. He carried the clothes in a bundle for an hour before realizing he was better off with them on, that to be bare under the sun would kill him quicker. He had quit trying to convince himself that he was dead. His face hurt, and he thought about Ramón's shoe. He pulled a wad of bills from his breast pocket and tore them up, cursing the jacket. Why couldn't it make water? Something useful? He fell asleep with his head tucked inside of it and when he woke it was dark again.
He wandered for three days and by the third day he was almost dead. His lips and eyes had swollen and cracked from the dehydration, and he was sunblind. At last he found himself on his hands and knees, shivering, trying to spit the sand from his mouth but unable to conjure any saliva. He thought he should take the jacket off and pillow it under his head so that he could finally sleep. But the jacket stayed on, and in the distance he heard a dull roar. Coming to get me, he thought. Coming to take me there for real. He tried to look and through the blur thought he saw one of the demons flying toward him, screaming his name with dust and light. He settled his head in his hands and waited to die.
But it wasn't a demon. It was a vehicle. He could hear the engine and the sound the tires made on the desert floor. It rolled up near him and stopped, and then a door opened.
"Dios mio, friend! What are you doing out here?" a man said, and he heard him step out of the vehicle. Then the other door opened and someone else stepped out.
He pulled himself up and squinted. He couldn't see very well, just blobs. Dark shapes moving in front of him. He waved a hand. His mouth opened and he tried to say, "Help me," but croaked instead. "Water," he tried to say, and then quit.
"Jesucristo, mi amor, he's almost dead." A woman's voice. Familiar. "Get him in the truck, we've got to get him back into the city."
"We don't have room."
"Put him in the truckbed."
The man sighed, and bent down. "Listen, friend, we're going to bring you with us."
He tried to answer, or thought he did, and then he was in the man's arms, feeling like a child. The feeling made him grin, and doing that sent him reeling into unconsciouness.
When he woke again he had the sense that much time had passed. An incredible amount. Weeks, or years even. But he also held within him a sense that this was wrong, that no time had passed at all. His little finger tapped against something soft. He was in bed, and there was a cold washcloth on his forehead. He tried to open his eyes, but wasn't sure if he'd done it because he still couldn't see. He tried to say a word, but the only thing escaping his lips was a low moan of pain.
It was quiet here, no siren of hot wind and sand against his eardrums, and he became aware of his own breathing. Someone else, too. He blinked open his eyes and tried to see who it was, but his vision was still impaired and all he could make out was a subtle blob to his right.
"Where am I?" The words came out this time, like a knife across brick. The blob jumped, and leaned forward. A cup or ladel was pushed to his lips, and he opened his mouth.
"Don't talk. Here, drink. Drink."
He tried but only managed a few small sips. If the desert had been hell, then this tiny trickle down his throat was heaven.
"You're back at my place. In the club, Blue Midnight. One of the upstairs rooms." The Blue Midnight, he thought. He recognized the name of the club - from the card inside the jacket pocket, Domingo's. And the voice...
"Lunes?"
He heard the sharp intake of breath that accompanied the twitch the blob made. But Lunes recovered.
"How do you know my name?"
"Lunes, it's me - your brother Domingo! Don't you recognize me?"
"Domingo?" She sounded suspicious.
"Yes, Domingo Ramirez! You are my sister! Am I so changed that you cannot see me anymore?"
"Oh, oh!" The blob straightened up, and got much taller suddenly. There was a clatter - the chair being knocked back. "Oh, oh, Domingo!"
She dropped to her knees and buried her face in his chest, sobbing.
"I thought you were dead," she said through choked gasps. "I thought I'd never see you again."
"I thought those things as well," he said.
"But you've finally come back to me. My brother, my long lost brother. My Domingo. I haven't seen you since we were so small."
Domingo became confused. What was she speaking of? It had been less than a week, hadn't it? With the gun, and Ramón. And then somehow the desert. When had he and Lunes been small? At that moment he began to feel that everything was wrong, that the comfort Lunes had given him was false, and this feeling was compounded when he realized that, lying here in this bed, he no longer wore the jacket. He struggled against the woman's weeping head and pushed sideways, groaning. Lunes was a blob falling back, surprised.
"What, what is it, Domingo?"
Domingo (and that is who he was now, wasn't he) struggled frantically to think of the right thing to say. What should he ask? Finally he settled on it.
"The jacket. Where is my jacket?" There was a frantic edge in his voice that Lunes must have picked up on, because she got to her feet and moved quickly to the other side of the room, returning with what he could only assume was the jacket.
"Here, it's here. Are you all right? No one's touched it." But almost seeing it, knowing where it was, wasn't enough. He needed to be wearing it, nothing would be okay until he was wearing it.
He took it from her and began sliding his arms into it, trying to find sleeves.
"Wouldn't you like your pants first? I mean, if you are in a hurry to leave..." She sounded hurt. Domingo pulled the jacket the rest of the way on and sat back on the bed. "No, no. It's just that the jacket...It's mine."
He could imagine the confused look on her face, and struggled for a different way to explain, but came up with none. It was greed, it was love. It was having gone through what he had, with only the jacket to comfort him. His only friend when the lights had gone down in the desert. However strange his answer must have seemed to her, she let it go, because then she was ladling more warm water to his lips and he sucked at it carefully. Despite his care, the front of him became wet, and he could feel the lines of liquid tickling his skin as they made their descent.
"How long have I been here?"
"Three days. We found you on a Wednesday night. It's Saturday. Now tell me, brother, do you feel well enough to try walking? You were able to sit up rather well, I saw."
Domingo flexed his legs. They were sore, and that simple action was almost unbearable. "Dios...I don't know. I don't think I can."
That is all right." She sighed, then, and said. "What a strange thing, my brother come back to me. After more than twenty years - I had almost begun to give up, you know. Mi hermano, back from the dead. What happened during all that time, Domingo? How did you escape?"
Domingo was overwhelmed with that feeling that something was terribly wrong here. What was she talking about? How he had escaped Ramón? But then why twenty years? None of it made sense.
"What year is it?" he asked, suddenly certain that he'd been unconscious for much longer than three days.
She told him. "2004, of course. July."
He must have looked like an infant then, his mouth open, his eyes staring at nothing in particular. It wasn't the year, that was the same. But four days ago, when he'd found the jacket, it had been somewhere near the end of September. The first week in October, even. And now it was July?
"July?"
"Yes. Julio. What is wrong, brother?"
'No. Nothing." He shook his head and laid back down. "Perhaps...perhaps I should get some more rest."
She stood up quickly. "Yes, yes of course. I shouldn't have gotten so excited. I'm sorry."
He shook his head. "It is wonderful to see...well, to hear your voice again. I love you, Lunes." His voice cracked when he said her name.
"And I you, brother." And she was gone, leaving Domingo alone with his broken body and his blindness. He slept.
The next few weeks were characterized by liquid meals and attempts to walk, and by gradually returning vision. Lunes kept close watch over him, and told him stories of her life, and when she did this he could hardly believe how strong she was. She told him how she had come to the city as a young girl, alone and without her brother, and had been picked up by a group of drug dealers and raised under dubious conditions, as they groomed her to become an object of lust to the rich. She was beautiful, even then, and would be sold to the highest bidder when she was old enough, a virgin prize. Weeks before the auction, Mexican police caught wind of it and raided the premises, finding enough drugs, guns, and broken women to take the men away for a long time. Again, Lunes found herself an orphan. She spent time in shelters and on the streets, and lived in a fashion that Sábado connected with until one day she was approached by a man who claimed that he saw through the filth and the hunger to see her true beauty, and that he would like to offer her a job.
The man saved her life, she said, and gave her a job dancing at the club he owned, called the Blue Midnight. Sábado was uncomfortable with the idea of Lunes stripping, and hearing her talk about it made him angry. The man hadn't saved her life at all - just exploited her body. He became even angrier when Lunes told him that the man had then taken her off the floor and given her a room upstairs, and that he'd begun to pursue her romantically.
"Who is this man," he demanded one day, "Who treats you so terribly and makes you so grateful?"
She looked away. "He is a good man, Domingo. I know it doesn't sound like so much, but he has taken good care of me. He loves me."
"Who is he, Lunes?"
"His name is Ramón. I haven't told him you are here, because he'd only get angry. Don't go looking for him, or I will lose you."
Ramón. The man from before. Who'd kicked him in the face and shot him like a dog out of simple greed. He was here too, three months earlier. Sábado felt his heart go cold, and a smile break through the angry mask of his face. Oh, Ramón, he thought, you will not get away for what you have done, or for what you will do.
It was during these weeks that he fell even deeper in love with her. If she only knew, he sometimes thought, that I am not her brother…but the thought always stopped there. It was wrong, but he was glad she thought of him this way. And the discrepancies in time began to make sense - if this was truly July (which the warm breeze traveling in through the shutters seemed to reinforce) then he'd been taken back in time. Perhaps when he'd been shot. Perhaps sometime in the desert. He wasn't certain. What he was certain of, almost completely now, was that if it had happened it had happened because of the jacket. He'd come back, Lunes had found him, and when he'd told her he was her brother she had acted as if her brother had been gone since childhood. Which meant that the man he'd pretended to be, the original Domingo, had not been her brother either - had in fact, been him all along. It explained so much - why he and the man in Domingo's driver's license had looked so similar. Why the man at the apartment complex had recognized him. Perhaps he knew all of this, intellectually, but it still took another event to drive it home.
One day, Lunes had coaxed him out of bed and was intent on taking him for a walk, out and down the street. He agreed, even though he was still weak, and his vision hadn't fully returned. Enough of it had, however, to let him see that Lunes was a supremely beautiful woman. Someone a man like him would have never dreamed of actually being around. It was strange that until this point he had never seen her, had in fact, only heard her voice, but it made his heart ache for her, along with the rest of him, even more.
And so they walked outside, and he held onto her hand and let her guide him down the sidewalk. "Where are we going?"
"You'll see."
He was almost not surprised when she stopped in front of a familiar building - the building he'd gone to when he'd begun his search for Domingo Ramirez. The hotel in which he should have died.
"You are well enough for your own room now, and I've gotten you one. In this apartment building. It is close enough to the Blue Midnight that I will still be able to see you as often as I have been, and you will be able to come see me as well."
"But Lunes, you didn't have to-"
"You are my brother, Domingo. I would do anything for you." Domingo's head bobbed to the ground. He felt guilty, and he found himself reaching for the pocket of his jacket and bringing out a roll of bills.
"It must have cost - here, let me pay for it." She put a hand up. "Please, no. Keep it. I am glad to have been able to help, and -"
"Lunes!" A man came rushing up to them, and then stood before them, staring at the money in Domingo's hand. "Lunes, what are you doing? Who is this?" The man made himself large before Domingo, casting a shadow over him.
"It is the man we saved from the desert, Ramón, and you won't believe this! He is my long lost brother Domingo, the one who was taken by the government when we were both only seven years old!" At the mention of Ramón's name, Domingo's knees locked up and he gritted his teeth. He put the money back into his pocket and stared, coldly, into the man's face. He did seem to have Ramón's characteristics, though Domingo couldn't see as clear as he'd have liked.
"The man from the desert?" Ramón seemed confused. "But you took him to the hospital, didn't you? That's what I told you to do."
"Yes, I was going to. But when he woke up he recognized me. He's my brother! I wouldn't have just dumped him at the hospital after that - he deserved better attention than that. My attention."
"Your brother, he says. This man that you found in the middle of the desert, on the edge of death, that you nursed back to life, this man tells you he's your brother and you believe him? And what's this money he's trying to put in your hands? A bribe?" He turned his attention to Domingo. "Are you trying to bribe your way into my girlfriend's life?"
"No," Domingo said.
"Please, Ramón. Calm down."
"Calm? Why should I be, Lunes? When in the past weeks have you even mentioned that you were keeping a man at the Blue Midnight? Hiding him from me. And now you believe he is your brother?" Ramón spat, and suddenly became silent. They stood there, the three of them, and the tension of it was almost too much for Domingo.
"Senor, this is not the place." He said it as if to an old friend, when the reality was he'd like to throw a fist into the man's throat.
"Mierda," the big man hissed. "This is all shit." He shoved Domingo in the chest. "You are shit." It perhaps shouldn't have been hard enough to knock him to the ground, but it did. Then Ramón was hanging over him, spitting words into his face with a ridiculous mix of force and quiet. "You may not have to bribe my Lunes to believe your lies, but you will have to bribe me. Give me the money."
"Que?"
"The money, you lying prick. The money you just put back in your pocket."
"Oh. That money," Domingo said, but he didn't move. The big man snarled and pulled open the jacket, reaching into the pocket where the money had come from. He pulled out a wad and shook it in the smaller man's face. "I may not know who you are, but I know what you are. And I know what you're trying to do here." He looked around, huffing. "Let's make a deal, friend. Since you have all the money, let's say that from now on I work for you. You pay me and I let you live your life. You pay me and I don't get the authorities involved. You pay me and I don't hurt you in front of your sister. From now on, I work for you, and this is how you're going to pay me. And you might as well get used to it. Do you understand?"
Domingo said nothing; just stared at the blurry face in front of him.
"Now, friend, we're going to leave. Come on, Lunes." He grabbed her by the arm and led her away, down off the sidewalk. Lunes didn't struggle; perhaps she was used to this behavior, perhaps she was smart enough not to cross the man once he had his mind set. He watched them go, or what he thought was them; the sidewalk was full of people now, bustling past and staring. None of them helped him up.
He rolled onto his hands and knees and slowly got to his feet. Then, wincing, he walked into the hotel.
The man at the counter was familiar: the same man who had let him into his room the first time, only with much shorter hair. "I'm here to check in for a room. Domingo Ramirez?" The man nodded and flipped open a ledger, and began going over it with his finger. "Ramirez. Yes. Your sister was in here earlier, she said she'd be back with you to check in, since you didn't have identification. I assume that since she isn't here, that you do? I'll need that in order to give you the key."
"Oh, right. The driver's license." The one he didn't have yet. Domingo opened his mouth to add, "Well, you recognize me, don't you?" before catching himself. This was the past. He chewed on his bottom lip and frowned. This could be a problem. "You know, I think I might have left it...I'll just come back."
He turned around and began to walk away, and then had a thought. Curiousity led his hand into the jacket pocket, and though he was almost expecting the card to be there, still the feeling of laminate against his fingers sent a chilled shockwave down his spine. He pulled the license and looked at it. The jacket, it would seem, made more than money. A lot of good you did me in the desert, he thought.
"Wait," he said, turning back. "I seem to have made a mistake. Here it is, right in my pocket." The man raised an eybrow at him, and took the card. He barely glanced at it.
"Yes, that's you. Here, I'll get your key." Domingo tried to act calm, and then the key was in his hand. "Enjoy your stay here a la Buenisima Semana." Domingo nodded and started toward the stairs. Another thought struck him.
"One more thing, if I can ask."
"Yes?"
Domingo reached into the pocket again, this time feeling for and finding a bill. He crumpled it and put it into the cashier's hand. "I have a medical condition. I suffer from memory loss and dimensia. It's very possible that one day I will show up here looking extremely confused, almost as if I don't know who I am or why I'm here. I need you to keep an extra key handy, so you can let me into my room if that happens."
The man at the counter nodded. "Sure I will, Mr. Ramirez. Not a problem at all."
Domingo smiled. "Thank you." He turned one final time and did not see the smiling man unfold the bill, did not see the look of shock on his face, or how quickly he then pocketed it.
The hotel room looked the same as it had, and for some reason even though it had been the site of a traumatic event, it felt like home to him. Comforting. He would visit the Blue Midnight tomorrow, he decided. And if Ramón was there, he would begin his manipulation of the man. Thinking of it gave him the feeling of satisfaction, as if he'd solved a problem, and he followed that feeling to the big bed where the afternoon sun lulled him to sleep.
The next day as he was getting ready to go out and take his walk to the club, there was a knock on his door. He paused. "It's me, Domingo. It's Lunes." He thought back to the last time she'd said something like that, couldn't help it, but of course there would be no Ramón out there waiting for him this time. That would come later. "A moment, Lunes." He threw the jacket over his shoulders and pulled open the door. She thrust her way in.
"I'm so sorry about yesterday, I had no idea he would be following me, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. He's often doing things like that. Ramón is a jealous, troubled man. He comes close, but I don't believe he'd ever hurt anyone. Not seriously, at least." Domingo bit his tongue. "Anyway, I came by to give you this." She thrust a little phone into his hands. He recognized it. "My number is in there, you can call me whenever you need to. I just...well, I don't think it would be a good idea for you to come by and try to see me, at least not for now. Not with Ramón being like he is. I told him that he's not to take any more money from you, and he agreed that he wouldn't, so he won't be around looking for you."
"Did you tell him where I'm staying?"
Lunes looked hurt. "Of course not! Why would I do that? If he knew where you were, he'd be tempted to come anyway, no matter what I had said.'
"Tell him. He's going to figure it out sooner or later."
She looked confused. "I don't understand."
"Never mind. Just let me ask one thing. As your brother."
"Of course."
"Why are you seeing this man when he's so clearly wrong for you?"
Lunes let out a loud sigh and put her hands at her hips. Like she'd been asked this same question many times from many different sources, and had grown tired of answering it. Domingo raised an eyebrow at her, daring her to answer him honestly and she dropped her arms and looked down. She looked weak.
"I don't know. I wonder myself all the time. He aggravates me to no end, with his little stunts and his behavior. But he has his moments too. He can be extremely romantic when he wants to be, and I guess I've always had this idea that if I just do the right things, then he'd be like that all the time. Because that's the Ramón I love. I guess I put up with the other part of him because of that. That and...well, I guess you could say I owe him." She gave a dismissive laugh. "I should just tell you it's because he's such a wonderful lover, and that you should be jealous. That's what I tell all of the other girls at the Blue Midnight. The working girls."
"It was Ramón, wasn't it? The man who got you to quit dancing. Gave you a job at the bar."
She nodded. It made sense - there was still loyalty to him. Even if he was the bastard who owned the place, who had put her in the position to spend her innocence so cheaply to begin with. Then he'd simply gotten greedy, seeing something that he wanted for himself and nobody else. The very thought made Domingo's heart pump harder, sending adrenaline spiked with anger and jealousy through his veins.
"Would it change anything if I told you that I didn't want you to be involved with Ramón anymore?"
"Are you telling me that?"
Domingo shrugged. "Would it change anything?"
She paused for a long moment. "Nothing that you'd want it to. But I appreciate that you care." She kissed him on the cheek, a quick peck. Domingo blinked - her lips were soft and her smell was almost more than he could take. "Now, I have to go to work. Ramón will be wondering where I've gone."
Ramón came to collect his second paycheck two days later, and when Domingo had returned from a brief walk around his new part of the city, he was waiting just outside the door to the hotel room. "Ramón," Domingo said amiably. "What a surprise."
"It shouldn't be, you lying dog. I said I would be back."
"But three days? That seems too soon. Like you weren't busy enough to keep from thinking about me. What a shame, I can't imagine the kind of work you do would even leave you with any sort of free time, unless you were doing it poorly."
Ramón hissed in his ear.
"You know why I'm here, and it doesn't have to do with business. It has to do with Lunes, and the money. Now unlock the door so we can go in and talk."
"Talk business? I thought you said it wasn't business. Someone with an agenda like yours would do well to keep consistent. Besides, I don't think it's necessary to go through all that. Let's take care of it right here. In the hall."
Ramón narrowed his eyes. "Okay, Domingo. Right here."
Domingo reached in his jacket pocket and pulled a bundle of bills from it. "Here." He held his hand out. "Let's make it four days next time."
Ramón weighed the bundle and fingered through it, but Domingo could tell he was faking - there was no way he would have been able to count it all, not with the amount Domingo had pulled (and it was quite a bit).
The bigger man grunted, satisfied, and perhaps a little dismayed. Maybe he had hoped for something else, a refusal of payment, a sort of showdown. It seemed all he was left with was money.
"Three days. Not four." He turned to leave. "I will be watching you. And I have told Lunes that she is not to be in contact. She may be stubborn, but she will obey me."
Domingo winked. "However you want to play it." He doesn't know about the conversation Lunes and I had last night, on the telephone. It had been a mundane enough conversation, but when mere contact was being denied, it meant something for Lunes to have called him.
Ramón cocked his head, as if trying to figure if there had been something in Domingo's phrasing that was cause for alarm. In the end, however, he must have decided against it, because he finally left Domingo and went the other way, and down the stairs. Domingo smiled.
Inside the apartment, he pulled a pillowcase from one of the pillows. He sat in the bathtub with the jacket and the pillowcase, the pillow under him. Every four or five minutes he'd pull a handful of bills from the jacket and stuff them into the pillow case. He did this for six hours, until it was full dark and he was hungry. And he would eat, would eat food so expensive it would probably make him sick. Before that, though, there was money to count. Lots of it.
He dumped the pillowcase on the bed. The bills were mostly twenties, with other denominations peppered in. Fives, fifties, ones, hundreds. He put the twenties in stacks of fifty, and kept the others aside. Before long he had thirty stacks of twenties, or thirty-thousand dollars. He put it back into the pillowcase. From the remaining bills, he took twenty hundreds and divided them up into four rolls of five. These he tucked into the lower right pocket of his jacket. The ones and fives he put into the lower left. The fifties, which totaled sixteen hundred, he tucked into the drawer by the bed with the few remaining hundreds. He left the pillowcase on the bed, where it looked just like all the other pillows.
On his way out of the building, he tipped the smiling man a hundred from his inside pocket, which had filled itself again.
Outside of the Blue Midnight, he stood in the street and looked up. His belly was full of buttery lobster. The club was brightly lit, neon-stained bass from inside made the air in his lungs hum. He checked his pocket, but the thing he was looking for was missing. He'd been standing here for twenty minutes checking the pocket, but it still wasn't there. Maybe he was doing something wrong. Shrugging, he got in line. There were three men in front of him, and they were all ushered inside after a group of three drunks stumbled out. It was his turn, but the door guard just stood there, staring at him. Domingo watched the door.
Another man left. The door guard turned to him and held a hand out. "Member card."
"Oh, right." Domingo put a hand into his jacket, hoping this time it would be there, and he almost didn't believe it when it was. "Here it is.” The guard took it, looked at it, and then nodded. Domingo was in.
He took three steps inside the club, moving toward the bar, when someone shouted. Then he was being grabbed, not by the door guard, but by another man. Domingo said nothing, and let himself be pushed out the door.
"Marcelo," the new man said, "This is the pendejo from Ramón's new list. What are you doing letting him in?"
Marcelo, the door guard, looked confused. "Oh, of course. My mistake."
"Keep him here. I'm getting Ramón."
"Okay."
The door guard pulled Domingo to the wall and held his chest with one beefy arm.
"Don't try to get away."
"Of course not." He said it cheerfully, and Marcelo's eyebrow lifted a little, mouth twisting into a sneer.
And then Ramón was there, with the man who'd grabbed Domingo and two others. Four hired men. An amount he could work with.
"Oh, hello, Ramón."
"Shut up. What are you doing here? I told you to stay away."
Domingo smiled. Ramón nodded at Marcelo, and the bigger man pinned him against the wall with both arms. Ramón pulled back and sent a fist into Domingo's gut. He doubled over.
"Answer the question."
Domingo came back up, gasping. Through it all, he kept the smile. "I'm confused. Did you want me to shut up or not? Hell of a way to treat your boss, Ramón." The other men looked at Ramón, who rubbed his palms together.
"You aren't my boss.”
“Oh? I must have misunderstood. You said you were working for me. That's why I'm paying you, isn't it? So you can keep my club alive? My muscle under contract?"
A smarter man would have realized what was going on and said yes, but Ramón was angry.
"Your club? Your muscle? Who are you kidding? These are my men. Handpicked."
"Faithful, too, right? But how faithful would they be if they knew how hard you were going under? Cutting their pay, and they understood. Hard times. Let me ask you, Ramón, how much of that money I gave you did you pay my muscle? I'm guessing none."
He looked up at Marcelo, who was chewing his bottom lip.
"That's why I've come to pay you each in person," Sábado said. He put a hand in his lower pocket and brought out a roll of hundreds, and took his other hand to grab Marcelo's wrist. He closed the bigger man's hand around the roll. He leaned forward and said in the man's ear, "Come find me. Why have this bucket of dumb skimming your pay when you can get it directly from me?" Marcelo pocketed the money, and looked down. He let go of Domingo.
"Why you dirty, lying hijo de puta!" Ramón lunged at him, punching at his belly again. Domingo turned, expecting it, and Ramón's fist met brick. He yelled.
Domingo walked around behind Ramón, who'd fallen to his knees and was clutching the hand that came off his forearm at an odd angle. The knuckles were covered in blood. Ramón gritted his teeth in the red neon light, eyes clenched tight to perhaps keep the tears in.
Domingo pulled his head close to Ramón's ear. "I don't think we're going to keep going down your path, Ramón. This is my game now. In the morning I'm going to the bank, to pay off your loans. The Blue Midnight will be more mine than yours, and your relationship with Lunes will become incidental at best. Tomorrow, you will finally work for me. What can you do about it?"
Raising himself to his full height, he looked pointedly at Marcelo. "So? What are you doing standing there? Get this man an ambulance! If you can't do that, what use are you?"
Marcelo pulled a phone from his pocket with a sly smile. Domingo nodded at the other men and walked back into the Blue Midnight. He took the stairs, and found the room he had spent so much time in. He knocked.
"What is it, Ramón? I'm tired, and hardly dressed."
"It's not Ramón," Domingo said through the door. It was open before he had a chance to wonder if she'd heard him. There she was in front of him, standing in a lace nightgown that barely covered her shoulders. The soft cups of her breasts teased him, and the gown hung open just enough to give him a flattering view of her smooth dark legs. He was helpless, and the adrenaline that had been coursing through him from his encounter with Ramón turned to jelly in his blood.
"Domingo! What are you doing here? Ramón would kill you if he found out. Why didn't you call? I would have snuck out." She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him quickly inside. She locked the door. She led him to her bed he sat on its edge, trying not to look at her. She sat beside him and massaged his back through the jacket.
"Are you all right, brother? You look startled."
“I’m fine. I just wanted to see you. I suppose I just wasn't expecting to see you like this. You are a very beautiful woman." Lunes blushed, and for the first time seemed to realize her state of dress. She got up quickly, stepping to her dressing corner and pulling the divider closed. As she dressed, Ramón tried to calm himself. She thought he was her brother, and so her guard was down. He would be wrong to take advantage of that. Still, he couldn't get the picture of her out of his mind, standing in front of him nearly nude with a look on her face that was some mixture of concern, confusion, and joy. It was impossible not to fall in love, and though Domingo had done the impossible once already (with the help of the jacket) he didn't stand a chance against Lunes.
She came out dressed in sweat-clothes, which, while covering her much more fully, still gave him the benefit of viewing her feminine outline. It was easy to imagine her naked, her body along with his, her smell in his nostrils. He tried to think of something else, but all he came up with was Ramón. Ramón, his body moving in waves against hers, his grinning devil's face as he took advantage of her once again. The thought set his teeth on edge.
"I didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable," he said, "It's only that..."
"I understand," Lunes said softly, looking at him with thinly-veiled amusement. "It simply didn't occur to me. I'm flattered, Domingo. And thank you for telling me - anyone else would have kept his mouth shut."
He laughed nervously. "Perhaps I should have."
She blushed and looked away, and Domingo cleared his throat and looked at the door instead.
"You won't have to worry about Ramón keeping me away anymore. I settled things with him downstairs. He's going to make me a partner."
"A business partner? For the Blue Midnight? Domingo, I don't know if you know this, but that might be a terrible idea. This place is going down. It may only have a month or two left. Ramón can hardly sleep at night. If he's convinced you, it's because he wants you to fail."
"No, Lunes. It was my idea. I'm going to the bank in the morning."
She fell silent. She looked at him for a long time. Finally she sat on the bed, not as near as last time. It was as if for the first time she realized there was more to him than she'd thought. Something to be wary of. Domingo looked guiltily down at the jacket.
"I know that it may not be my position to ask, but, Domingo...where are you getting all of this money? Is it coming...are you a part of the drug pyramid? Or are you stealing it?"
"Nothing like that. It's money from before you found me. I had a very different life then, one that almost killed me. I really would rather not talk about it." Technically, none of these were lies. He'd gotten the jacket before she'd found him, at least in his own personal timeline, and he had almost starved to death on the streets of Trampos.
She nodded slowly. "All right. But please tell me if you are in trouble, all right? I don't want anything to happen to you, not after I've already lost you."
"I promise. And I promise nothing will happen to me. Or to you."
His whole body was vibrating for want of her, and he couldn't stop himself. He pulled her to him. She buried her face in his chest, and even though it felt like stealing, like cheating or lying, he kissed her on the cheek. Please, God. Stop me before I do something she won't forgive.
There was a hard rap on the door. Lunes leapt to her feet, eyes wide. She looked from the door to Domingo and back, panicked.
"It's him," she hissed. "You have to hide."
Domingo didn't move. He let out a long breath in relief and then stood up. He walked to the door and opened it. Lunes stood staring, frightened disbelief crossing her face. It was Marcelo.
"The ambulance came to pick him up, boss. What did you want me to do now?" Domingo pulled a small wad of cash from the jacket pocket and deposited it in Marcelo's hand. "Back to business as usual, Marcelo. I'll be back tomorrow night."
"Yes sir." The expression on the bouncer's face made it clear he was already liking new management much better than the old one. He turned and left.
Domingo walked back to Lunes, who hadn't stopped staring.
"Ramón broke his hand on the brick wall of the building earlier. They're taking care of him at the hospital. I've already told the workers I'm going to be taking over." He hadn't, not exactly, but he felt they were already getting the message. "I should go and get some sleep," he said. Lunes nodded slowly, as if she were in shock.
By the time he was gone she still hadn't moved.
He took the pillowcase to the bank the next morning, and walked out as the majority owner of the Blue Midnight.
He stopped by the hospital. It was small and poor, with only two sections. The Emergency Room and an operating theater. It was staffed with four or five nurses and one doctor. Anything major had to be sent elsewhere, to one of the other hospitals in Trampos, though the conditions at any of those were also less than ideal. There were several small examining rooms that connected off the Emergency Room, and Ramón was in one of these, having his cast fitted. Domingo described Ramón to a nurse and though she hadn't wanted to tell him at first he put a wad of cash in her hand and she pointed to a room. For another wad, she told him how long he'd have to wait. He decided not to. He wrote a note for Ramón on hospital stationery and handed it to the nurse. She smiled at him.
At the Blue Midnight, employees were still cleaning up from the night before. The club wouldn't open for another five or six hours, but Marcelo let Domingo in. He made the rounds and introduced himself to all of the employees as the new co-owner of the place, and told them their jobs were intact. Better than that, in fact, he was giving them all raises.
At the hotel, he sat on his bed and pulled money out of the jacket.
The next day he bought a sports car. He hadn't especially wanted one, but couldn't think of how else to spend his money. He was driving around in it, down in the slums where he used to live. Where he still did, in fact. He got a sudden urge to visit himself, to tell him about the jacket, and about Lunes. But that might spoil the plan, because no rich man had visited him. Then he thought of Ramón. He should not be using the money to please himself, as with the car, but to destroy Ramón. The man who had and would try to kill him. It crossed Domingo's mind that perhaps he had brought Ramón's murder attempt on with his current foul treatment of the man, but he also knew Ramón would deserve whatever Domingo could give. How he had trapped the woman Domingo loved, how he had treated her behind closed doors. And he had pushed Domingo, back before his sight had returned. Ramón was not a good man, and although that was enough for Domingo to justify his own actions, he tried not to think on what he himself might be considered.
He hired a team of men to follow Ramón and make themselves visible every once in a while. Before the first week was out, Ramón didn't walk so much as a block without looking over his shoulder. Domingo wanted the man scared, restless. Always on the precipice of fight or flight.
He hired different men to bounce at the Blue Midnight, and when these showed up even Ramón didn't know of the switch. But the old were gone, serving Domingo as personal bodyguards, and Ramón couldn't go without protection. So he did what he hadn't done since he'd been a little boy with a big brother. He sat back and let it happen. The last of Ramón's pride was dwindling, and Domingo knew he had to have begun admitting he'd been beat. He also knew that didn't mean the man wasn't mad. Didn't mean he wouldn't be after Domingo until the smaller man was dead. He was perhaps even now purchasing a pistol and bullets.
Domingo met Lunes twice a week at a corner pastry shop. They would compliment each other's choice of dress, and Domingo would try hard not to fall in love even more.
And Saturday became Sunday.
In an abandoned industrial neighborhood at the southern end of Boston, on a street where hardly a car was parked, Willie Silverman had an appointment with someone he didn't know, and that made him nervous. Especially considering the money he'd deposited in the bank earlier in the week, and what he'd had to do to get it.
Willie got out of the van and looked up the street, squinting through the newborn downpour. The rainstorm had been brewing for hours above the city, finally breaking open just as he'd pulled up. There was no umbrella in the car but he wouldn't park any closer.
He had three blocks to go in the downpour, a particularly dystopian stroll on this early fall day. Boarded up windows and doors, waist-high weed lawns bordering gutters for spent needles. No cars parked on the side of the road, none passing through. This neighborhood, if a place without neighbors could still be called that, had moved on. Willie crossed the street, stepping through puddles. Road crews had come through and slapped asphalt into the wounded street, leaving a patchwork of unintended speed bumps. He couldn't blame them - who wanted to get shot for tax dollars? Even for him it had to be cash up front.
Usually all the cash, not just half. Not to mention that this job, that had taken him over the limit of what he was comfortable with, which had him sleeping more, wondering what had happened after he was out of the picture. All for five thousand dollars. And now here he was, going into a meeting blind. Normally he'd never do it, but they'd promised another five grand just for showing up, and the thing was -
We're scraping the barrel now, is the thing.
For the last two blocks he thought about the depth of the shit he was in, letting rain pelt him in the face.
He came to a squat building near the back of a vacant lot. It was brick, painted a used-to-be white, now peeling. This was the building that had been described to him in the audio file they'd left for him - though even that description had been lacking, and he understood why. It was a square brown box of a building without any windows, each wall the length of a city bus. There was one door, painted the same color as the building, rust bubbling through in a pattern that reminded him of skin.
He turned the handle but it didn't go. Willie pounded a wet fist against the metal and waited, soaked and annoyed.
The door finally opened. A tall man with glasses and wild black hair stood there, flinching at the rain. He nodded at Willie, then turned and motioned ahead. Willie stepped forward, slipping momentarily on a rubberized set of metal stairs before regaining his balance and stepping nimbly down.
There were four men placed around a pentagonal console the same harsh white as the rest of the room. Each side of the console housed a dark screen, a notebook, and a button. In all but one of the wedges sat a man. The woman who'd let him in, the one wearing the labcoat, bridged her fingers. She was smiling. The men sitting at the consoles stared up at him.
"I'm late, then," Willie said, speaking to the woman. Her face stretched to allow for a wider smile, one with teeth. "Oh, not at all. Silverman, William. Come on in. You look just like your footage."
Willie nodded, rankling behind his eyes. Footage? What was this? A sting? Blackmail? Either way if there was footage of him abducting the kid, evidence that could put him away for good, that meant things had already gone very wrong. Still, there was the little matter of being paid the other half. He’d gone too far to cut his losses, even if everything felt sideways.
"Is there something wrong?" the scientist asked.
"Sorry, I just thought the meeting would be one-on-one, not...in the round."
"We regret the information about the type of gathering couldn't be provided. We are extremely excited to see you finally arrive, however, Mr. Silverman. You've been a long time coming. Please sit." She motioned to the empty chair at the front of the console. “We’ve been keeping it warm for you." Willie took a step, sponging water onto the brushed metal floor. He glanced at the faces of the other men, who didn't look happy to see him at all.
The scientist frowned, and then made for a door to Willie's immediate right. She came out with a white towel, and not just a hand towel, either, but a full-sized beach item.
Willie made the towel into a bucket and then threw his head into it, rubbing and shaking the water out of it like a dog. His hair was a dark puff above him. As he sat down he sized up the two men on either side of him. The man on his left was mid-thirties with a lean face and sideburns that drove up into a bush of dark curls. Regular build. The man on his right was bald, with two metal hooks hanging from his left brow. Tattoos, bare arms. Muscles.
Seated now, Willie swiveled to face the woman in the coat. The towel, wrapped around his jeans now, felt warm. The scientist waited impatiently and Willie tried to crack his knuckles. They didn't crack.
"Now," the scientist said, "that we're all here, I will address the job."
"About time," the tattooed guy said, staring at Willie.
"You were each contracted by my organization for a special, two-part assignment. The first part you've all done."
"First part? That was the whole job!” the man sitting across and to the left of him said. He was older, with silver hair and glasses. “I’m just here to collect. I never agreed to any part two."
"We apologize that some of the details about the job couldn't be disclosed at the outset. Regardless, there is a part two, and you are all here now. So we can disclose the other half of the puzzle. Very exciting. Part two-“
“This is bullshit.”
”Part two of your assignment is to observe an experiment, and write down your observations. It will take at most an hour or two of your time, and then you will each receive your money. That sounds reasonable to me, what about you?"
The scientist moved to the front of the room, where she grasped a dangling string and pulled, rolling down a large map with a sharp mechanical SQUEE. On the map was a drawing of a tall box, like ten or so bricks stacked upright, end to end. Willie might have assumed it was a skyscraper, except it was too narrow. And there were no windows.
Only stairs.
"This is an underground facility,” the scientist said. “It was built specifically for this experiment. The subjects, and there are five of them, have been placed at each of the insertion points and have been sedated. You have each been assigned a subject, and your task will be to record their behavior.”
To the left of the side view was a top-down, or bottom-up, view. It looked like a floor plan to an apartment with no doors, only stairs leading up, down. Beneath that was a three-quarter view that showed a practical interpretation of the other drawings. It was too small to read in any detail. There were twenty-five, no - thirty, levels. Half-levels.
“What do they do? What are they thinking? Can you predict how they will act? Don't worry about recording what they say or where they are. We have machines for that. You are here to observe."
Because the inner part of every level, what might have been the living room of every hypothetical apartment, had been cut out. The thing was just one big elevator shaft with stairs built around it instead of walls. Willie tried to distinguish one single stair, and couldn't. The scale was too small. Pointing to several distinct points within the visual model were five red arrows and one green one. The green was unlabeled, and pointed to a spot that seemed almost directly at the center of the diagram. The red were numbered 1-5, and pointed to locations that were distributed evenly among the levels.
The woman in the coat yanked on the cord again and the map sucked back up into the casing. She clapped her hands.
"Okay. The bunks are in the other room, the shower as well. Sleep when you must, but I would advise you to treat the observations seriously. If you have any questions, you may submit them to me and my staff in writing. Put them in the slot. If there are no further delays, I'll start the experiment."
The woman in the coat walked to a door at the side of the room and went through it.
"I have a damn question now," one of the men said. The bald man sitting across from WIllie, to the left. The one with the earrings. "How long we gotta play this little experiment game till we get paid our other half?" But the door was closed. A moment later the door was gone, because a white slab of steel came down and latched into the floor directly in front of it.
“She said an hour or two, I thought.”
“But then why point out the shower and bunk beds? If we were going to be out of here that quick.”
"Good luck,“ the scientist’s voice said to them. It came from a system of speakers that had to have been positioned all around, because for half a moment he was tricked into the thinking the voice was in his head.
They waited for her voice to give them more, but “good luck” had been all.
The bald man threw his hands in the air, started to say something about how he wasn't used to being ignored, but he didn't get too far. Because that was when the screens came alive. Willie stopped caring that his damp clothes were starting to itch, forgot his surprise and anger at being lied to and locked in.
In front of him, in his own fifth of the console, was the image of a small round boy on his back, almost parallel between a wall and what looked like a ledge. Gee Willie thought to himself, This kid might roll right off the edge. At the other stations, other men were looking at screens just like he was, each showing a different child. He couldn’t see the other side of the terminal but he could guess, because the boy in the video was the one he’d kidnapped. How had he rationalized it? The boy was harmful to society and the people who were paying him were scientists, so maybe some good could come out of it? Now he was here, watching a boy in a jumpsuit sleep on concrete walls.
How long have they been here?
On the wall to his left, near the PA speaker, a composite of the video feeds of each kid. There were five. The first was of an ugly, ratty-haired looking girl with acne one could say had a mind of its own. She was pale and bezitted, her extra pounds stuffed into the same plain white jumpsuit it seemed they all wore.
The second child was a boy with short blond hair and a hook nose. He was muscular and his body was long on its platform. Willie spent less time looking at this image because he didn't need to. It was the boy he saw on the screen in front of him, the boy he’d brought in.
The third image was another boy. His hair was jet black and it grew in patches across his face and down his neck, like sideburns that had gotten lost.
The fourth was a girl, this one with freckles and strawberry red hair. Pretty.
The fifth was the boy that appeared on his own screen. Short and fat with curly brown hair, seemingly younger than the others. His nose was turned upward, his nostrils stretched wide. Supine.
Willie already thought of him as Piggy.
He kept looking at the mosaic on the wall. The children (that's what they were, none of them yet seventeen) were all positioned in the same way. They looked like fetal astronauts.
"Hoo-ee," the bald mercenary exclaimed at once. "Tell you what, I've never been paid to write anything down before, and that was even when the going price was only a penny."
He locked eyes with Willie. "How about you? A penny for your thoughts?" He snorted.
All the men looked back at Willie. He didn't like their eyes. Everything inside of him told him to be careful, that he was outnumbered, that he was in a bucket of shit if he got singled out, because these men were mercenaries for real. It was an identity for them, not a last resort. He only had one option, and that was to play dumb. Be agreeable, show you aren't a threat and they'll ignore you. Maybe you got a smart mouth, but maybe your head is a step or two behind. And maybe that was best. Who knew how long this experiment was going to last?
"A hundred thousand and you're getting closer. What's your name?" Willie said.
"Call me...Harry," the bald man said, and winked. The other three chuckled. Willie smiled.
"Harry, huh? My name's Willie.“
“So, I was asking what you thought. I thought I'd be hunting people when they showed me the contract. That's what I'm good at. Not writing a storybook. You okay with what they got us doing here, Willie?"
Back and forth. The other three heads followed the birdie like the conversation was a game of badminton. And that wasn't far off - there was a purpose to this. Willie was playing dumb and Harry had chosen the opposite path. He was using the latecomer as a tool to establish dominance. Willie was almost glad. He'd get a better feel for this group if they were tested with a thing like leadership. Also, he was aware of just how big of a mistake the bald man was making. If mercenaries took to authority, they wouldn't be mercenaries, would they?
"Sure, I mean. Money plays. If they want to pay us five thousand just to sit here and write stuff about these kids, why not?" It hadn't been five thousand - it had been ten. But now big hoss Harry and the rest would think they were being paid more than Willie for a reason, which could work to his advantage.
His plan was almost immediately validated. Harry stopped with the one-on-one and addressed the whole group.
"It's always been more than the money for me. When you get a job, you're not thinking about the envelope you get at the end, you're thinking about the thrill of it, the chase. The capture, the kill. It's more than money." The others were nodding. "Which is why I won't stand for being a pen jockey."
"You gonna leave?" This was from the guy to Harry's right, the one who'd let Willie in out of the rain. The bald man with the earrings turned to him. "I'm Frank, by the way." He held out a hand, which Harry ignored.
"No, I'm not gonna leave, Frank. Franky-boy. I'm just not going to write. This," he picked up the pen, "and this," he picked up the paper, "can get fucked. Do any of you have fire? A lighter?"
"You gonna burn it?" Willie said. Harry barely glanced in his direction. Good. But now Willie's head was telling him to back off the stupid a little, back off or he won't be ignoring you later, he'll be figuring a way to get you to do stuff for him. And then he might see what you've been making him, all of them, overlook.
The guy to Harry's right, Sideburns, pulled a Zippo from his pocket and held it out.
Three seconds later the bald man's paper was aflame, and he dropped it. It fluttered, smoldering, to the ground and made a black mark there. Harry snapped the pen in half and then threw it on the charred spot. He held onto the Zippo, even though Sideburns was reaching for it.
"Why do you really think we're here? Frank, Willie, Harry..." He pointed to himself and then at the other two.
"Mark," said the guy to Willie's right.
"Gil," said Sideburns. He reached for his lighter again, but Harry pulled away.
"Answer the question, Gil."
"I don't know, man. To watch these kids." Harry gave his head a slight shake, and put the lighter on Gil's fifth of the console.
"Sure, sure. But why not some of that lady’s friends? More scientists? That's what scientists do, right? Sit in rooms and write notes about experiments? Scientists, man. Not bounty hunters." He raised an eyebrow and waited for them to react to his profound observation.
Willie would have rolled his eyes if he could have - of course there was something off about this whole thing. He glanced at the wall again, seeing that none of the figures on the wall had moved. Were the screens showing static images? No, he saw breathing. Piggy's was most obvious, since his flabby chest puffed up more than the others.
"I'm guessing it's got to do with what the coat said. That we brought these kids in. Me, I got the ugly chick," Gil said. He'd pocketed the lighter.
"And I got the beardy kid and his ginger girlfriend," Harry said. "You got the blonde one," he said, addressing Willie, "so that leaves two of you and only one kid left. Which one of you didn't bring one in?"
Mark, the man to Willie's right, raised a hand. "I didn't. Not this time."
"I could have told you that," Frank said, "That fat kid wasn't easy. Took two tranqs to get him down, and then I almost broke myself putting him in the bed of my truck."
Harry ignored him. He was looking at Mark, eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, this time?"
"Just that, none of the kids I brought in for these people are on those screens."
"Yeah? Or maybe you're a plant. Is that it? You some kind of cop?"
Mark yawned. “Go fuck yourself."
Harry stood up, his bald head turning pink. “What did you just say to me? Go fuck my-"
There was a hissing sound then, one they all seemed to recognize as the releasing of gas. There was a flurry of movement. Gil and Frank both lurched to their feet and were looking about for vents and pipes that they might plug.
"Stop." Willie said, noticing on the wall that the mosaic of images was no longer so seemingly static.
"The gas is in the facility. They're waking them up." Mark, it seemed, had noticed the same thing. He hadn't moved - his eyes were still locked on Harry, and Willie saw something in them.
Gil, Harry, and Frank all turned to watch the wall. The kids were indeed waking up. They did it in similar fashions, rolling over and reaching for their heads, pushing themselves to a position on hands and knees and then pausing, perhaps for their heads to clear from the effects of the drugs.
wh
Willie turned to his monitor and picked up the pen by his notebook. He opened it to the first page, and wrote a word at the top. Observations. Then, considering, he drew an arrow to the right. Observations ---->Piggy.
But it was a long time before he felt he had anything notable to observe. He had an idea it didn't matter.
"Christ, how weird," Frank said. "Like rats in a maze. What happens when they find each other?"
"Lord of the Butterflies." This from Harry.
"Flies," Gil said. "And I don't think much like that will happen - no firewood or jungle. No pigs." Then he laughed.
Willie tried to crack his thumb. Just that one, but it didn't crack. These men joked, but they didn't know - couldn't see what was going on here. All these kids, if they followed the model of the hook-nosed blond boy he'd brought in, were criminals. Shaped by desires and anti-social behavior instead of morals. Bad kids, in other words. Kids that wouldn't be missed by their schools, friends, or parents. It was pretty clear that whatever they were going to observe here, it wasn't going to be pretty. It definitely wasn’t going to be legal. Which meant there were no rules.
Willie got up. He started walking to the living quarters.
"Going to have a shower and a change of clothes. Yell or something if anything interesting happens." The other men had turned back to the screen, already losing interest in Willie.
"Yeah, sure.”
Willie went through the door the scientist had gotten the towel from. There were six bunks, stacked in twos. He threw his shirt on the bottom bunk furthest from the door, and then pulled the rest of his clothes off. There was a door directly across from his bunk, and he pulled it open to find a big bathroom with a stainless steel sink, stainless steel mirrors, two prison-style toilets and two shower heads coming down from the ceiling. Beneath the shower heads were drains, but no curtain, no dividers. The latest in comfort and privacy, he thought, and everything inside of him was yelling at him to get out. What did I get myself into this time? He'd shower quickly, get dressed, and then make some excuse to go to his van. Then he'd just drive away. Fuck the money. He'd made a living on his intuition, and the only other time he'd ignored it had gotten him thrown in the can.
He didn't bother to worry about if the door was already locked. If that had already happened, then there wouldn't be any running away. If that had happened, he'd already stepped off the cliff. The rest of it depended on a few unknown factors: how high was the cliff, and was there anything soft to land on. You might come out all right if you got lucky, but that wasn't the point. The point was that you were already falling.
Willie pulled one of the wall levers, and cold water came out of the tap. He waited about fifteen seconds with one hand in the stream to see if it would get any warmer, but that was wishful thinking. Come on down, folks! Cold showers, cold showers for everybody! Willie stepped in, and closed his eyes. He was outside again, with the rain pouring down on him. He rode his shivers and chattering teeth to a place of calm, of peace. He relaxed each one of his muscles, starting the ones in his little toe and moving on up like his sister had taught him when they'd both been kids. Self-hypnosis technique, modified from the actual hypnosis he'd pretended to undergo with her at the helm. Self-actualizing visualization was another term he'd heard, this one several years after his sister had committed suicide, but it was all the same thing. The mind-body connection slowly and carefully disconnected, piece by piece. Until they were two separate entities, his mind a balloon on a string, floating above. There were no stresses here, no aches or memories, just the blissful peace of being.
When the water ran out it took almost a minute for Willie to notice. He blinked, and then looked down at himself. His feet were dark the dark purple-blue of a tropical fish. They were numb, or asleep.
“Shit.” He was about to go for a towel, but then he noticed someone in the doorway. It was Gil. He looked worried.
“We're locked in here.”
Willie got the towel the scientist had given him, and wrapped it around his middle again.
“I thought the lock was on the inside.”
“One of those big walls came down in front of it. We tried to move it, but...” he shrugged.
“Fuck?”
“Fuck.”
Under the bunks were long drawers packed with white jumpsuits. On the chests, to the right of the zipper, were nametags. G STUCKY, the first one read.
“That one's mine,” Sideburns said. “Gil Stucky.”
“It's yours? Did you know about these?”
Stucky looked at him. “No, but I can read. What's your name? Silverman? Those should be yours.” He pointed to a pile of jumpsuits at the end of the drawer. W SILVERMAN. Between the two S's, there was a M LOWENSTEIN, a F HANKERSON, and a H BLACKSHIRE.
“We get what, five jumpsuits each? How long are we supposed to sit in here doing God knows what?”
“Guess that depends on how many showers you plan on taking.” He winked. Willie clenched his teeth and inside where nobody could see, he rolled his eyes too. Wouldn't want any of that annoyance trickle out, not now. Stucky wanted to make friends, see, and that was good.
“Not too many more. No hot water, and not a whole lot in here to get dirty with.” He pulled a suit with his name on it from the drawer, then looked at Stucky amiably. “You mind? You already seen about two or three dates worth of my ass, probably.” The other man laughed, and held a hand up. Gee, mister, sorry. I got it. “See you in the war room.”
“Right.” He got into the thing. It was soft, and it was thin. Breathable, but in a way that suggested it kept just the right amount of heat in. How simple would it have been to give them all suits that didn't keep them warm enough, or sweated them out? How long had they been planning this?
The War Room, Willie thought as he walked into it, was really an apt description. He'd seen movies – this was like NASA or something. Except instead of buttons to push they got pens and notepads, and instead of Ed Harris they got Harry Blackshire. Three of the men were sitting down, watching their screens with varying levels of interest. The guy who'd called himself Mark, the one Harry had fingered at least momentarily as a cop, had his knees up to his chin and was squinting, eyebrows furrowed so they made the space between them and just above his nose bulge out like a stubbly peanut. Harry was pacing, not even bothering with the screens. He was doing laps in front of where the door to the outside used to be. Willie walked over, pretending to appreciate the white wall as a superior piece of tech. He gave a low whistle. Harry, sensing he had an audience, began to mutter.
“Had to lock us in once they figured out we weren't going to stay. Bastard came up right when I was about to lead a march. I said we didn't need this bullshit, that we didn't need any of it. I got jobs waiting that'll pay more than this stupid expeeeeriment.” He looked over at Willie, and raised an eyebrow. “What the hell you got on, soldier?”
“We're gonna go out through the big TV, Harry. Wonkavision,” Willie said, then he forced himself to laugh like he was half gone on acid.
Harry looked like he was afraid of getting contaminated with stupid. He took a step back, and Willie wandered toward the console, grinning. He stopped grinning when he saw that Piggy had found the ugly girl, and they were both standing in front of some kind of box.
“Who's watching the...less pretty one?”
“I call her Rhonda,” Frank said. “Reminds me of my first wife. I wasn't one to show her off around town, but she got prettier when the lights went out. Feisty, too.”
“How long have her and the fat kid been together?”
“About five minutes now. They were the two closest to the middle of the thing, you see. Only about eight levels between them. Where they are now, that's where the blue arrow was on the map. Where the box is.”
On the wall, two of the pictures were the same. Piggy and Rhonda, regarding each other. Mouths moving.
“Why can't I hear them?”
Frank pointed to his ear. There was a bud in it. “There should be one attached to the monitor. Put it in your ear, the microphone for your kid and the earpiece are connected. Must be in their jumpsuit somewhere, but I haven't been able to see anything. Probably real small so they don't notice.”
Willie sat down. Just under the bottom right of his monitor was a little black tray with the headphones symbol stamped into it. He slid the tray out. The earpiece went in his ear. Immediately he began to hear them.
“...so I just followed the smell. I'm not too good at making decisions.” This was Rhonda. On his screen, the girl waited for Piggy to respond.
“I want to open it. Do you have anything to smash with? Of course you don't. You're useless. Look and see if there's some kind of button.”
Rhonda eyed him, but crouched down to the box anyway. Willie leaned forward, forcing himself to get a better look as well. It was a white box, white like the stairs, like the jumpsuits, like the room of screens. On it's front, the side that faced the children, was a small hole, about the size of a billiard ball.
“What do you think goes in there?” Piggy asked. The girl didn't answer him. “Or comes out of it? I've never seen a vender with only one hole.” Then he laughed. His voice was high and squeaky, and his laugh was like that cartoon woodpecker's. Woody. “Put your hand in it,” he said.
“I don't wanna. What if it bites me?”
“It's a box, you stupid. It's not gonna bite.”
“You do it.”
Piggy looked around, and then the corners of his mouth started to twitch. “Listen, Betty-Boo, you're gonna put your arm up that hole or I'm gonna kick you in the mouth. You're down there and I'm up here and you should wish to God I don't because I'm the kicker on my middle school's football team.”
Willie picked up his pen. Controlling personality, enjoys the upper hand. Bad at nicknames. Probably not on any football team.
Rhonda's lip quivered. She looked from Piggy's face back to the hole, and then stretched her hand out. She put it in.
“It's warm in there. And there's nothing...it's just a tube.”
“Go further.”
She rolled up the sleeve of her jumpsuit with her other hand, and stretched. Pretty soon she was in up to her elbow.
“There still isn't anything. It's emp-” she stopped. Her eyes got wide. “Oh.”
“What?” Piggy crouched, and his nostrils had started to flare rapidly. He licked his lips. “Oh, yeah, I can smell it. Bring it out.”
“But-”
“Give it to me!” He pantomimed a place-kicker's wind-up and follow-through. “That's your head, Betty-Boo. It's up and it's goooood.”
“Not too fond of your boy, Willie.” Frank was picking his teeth. “I think Rhonda has a right to whatever it is she's got ahold of.”
“Not my boy, Frank. You brought him.”
“Yeah...” The other man whistled and slid his eyes to the left.
On the screen, Rhonda was puling her arm from the hole in the box. She held up a dark brown ball.
“What the fuck is that, Willie?” Frank said, but Willie said nothing until Piggy snatched the ball from the girl's fingers and took a bite out of it.
“Only one thing you'd eat like that if you weren't hungry.”
“Chocolate?”
“I'd have to say so.”
“They've got a machine feeding them chocolate balls.”
“At least one.” Willie didn't clarify if he meant one ball, one machine, or one person getting fed. It didn't matter. The girl stood up, and put her hands on her hips. She was taller than Piggy now, but only by an inch or so, and she didn't have the mass to worry him. The fat boy gnawed at the chocolate ball, and after about a minute it was small enough to pop into his mouth. His cheeks bulged, and dark brown drool made it down his lips. He grinned devilishly at Rhonda, and her eyes were beady with murder.
“The best I've ever tasted,” Piggy said, and stuck his dark tongue out at her. “You can lick it if you want. Leftovers, you know.”
In the War Room, Gil looked up from his screen at Willie and Frank. “Here he comes. My guy.”
“You're gross,” Rhonda said, and turned around. As she did, the blonde boy with the hook nose jumped down the eight stairs that separated the half-level above. He was quiet, landing with a softness that suggested he was much stronger than he looked.
Willie knew all about it.
The blonde boy took in the scene from a crouch, eyes darting from Piggy to Rhonda and then into the box. Then back to Piggy, and the drying brown lines on his chin.
Hooknose leapt up, and in one catlike motion took Piggy's legs out from under him and dropped the fat boy to the ground. Rhonda stood back, arms crossed. Willie had a good idea of what she was thinking: here's the police, come to set things straight. Here's a man who knows right from wrong. But her satisfaction soon soured.
“Where'd you get it. The box? That thing give you the chocolate?”
Piggy nodded emphatically, his eyes bulging. Willie thought he might be choking. Throat laden with the dark material, airways blocked up and that sudden change of up and down couldn't have helped any. But the boy was merely suffering from a vice-grip on his trachea. Which loosened when he started trying to blab.
“She,” he croaked, pointing, “She got it. For me.”
The blonde boy let go of Piggy and the fat thing dropped to the floor, one hand at his throat, the other at his chest. While the blonde boy ordered the girl to get on her knees again and shove her arm up the hole, Piggy took a finger and licked the chocolate off his chin and put it in his mouth. Willie watched.
He watched, and he wrote. “Exhibits antisocial behavior. Selfish. Blonde boy is alpha male, Piggy won't challenge him.”
Inside, where he'd been justifying to himself that what he was doing over the years wasn't just a job, it was a way to keep the world clean and safe, or at least his city, something began to bang against his spine. The blonde boy was the reason for that. He'd brought him, he'd put him here. Willie Silverman was the reason Rhonda was on her knees again, was fishing another coveted treat out of the box. It would be her second, and she wouldn't be able to taste this one either. Not that he felt sorry for her. They were all bad, all of the kids. Just that injustice was injustice, whether it was against the innocent or the guilty. And this injustice was partly his fault.
Then the blonde boy had the second chocolate, because this time the girl gave it up willingly. She looked at the newcomer like a god, like she was already in love. The blonde boy didn't eat the ball. He sniffed it, gave it a swift lick, and then stuffed it into his jumpsuit. It would melt, Willie thought, but maybe that wasn't the point at all. Maybe it was just that he had something the others wanted, or that he'd deprived them of it.
Piggy had gotten back to his feet, slowly and carefully. He didn't look mad, just thoughtful. He seemed to be building a grin somewhere behind his blank facade. Willie waited for a laugh, for the kind of idiotic show of fealty he'd expect right about now, but none came.
“Fucking kid's plotting already.” He said this to himself, and none of the console men heard. The voice that answered him wasn't any of theirs, and it wasn't in his earphone.
“Damn right I am. Gotta start somewhere.” Behind him. Harry.
Willie frowned.
After almost forty minutes of pacing and regarding the blocked door, Harry sat back down. This relieved Willie greatly, because he wasn't in the habit of turning his back on potential threats. The bald man was back in front of his console, where Willie could keep an eye on him. He supposed he had the scientist to thank, since the only chairs in the whole place were the ones she and her fellow baby-monitors were sitting in.
The dark-haired boy and his girlfriend had finally wandered up to the box, and the other three. He held her hand, and she let him pull her along because that was probably what she was used to. They were introduced to Blondie and Rhonda and Piggy, and to the box, and that was where they'd all gathered, what they all sat around rubbing their hands together as though it made fire as well as chocolate. And chocolate was what it had stopped making. Rhonda's arm had only been good for three balls of the dark brown stuff before it stopped coming, and all of them tried it but only the strawberry-haired girl's arm was skinny enough to get in past the elbow. She looked at Rhonda while she did it, and the ugly girl was grinning cruelly. It was as if she didn't understand the difference -
“Was there anything special you did? A button you pressed in here? A lever?”
“What kind of special is there to do to a tube, slag? I just stuck my arm up there and waited for that thing to lay it's egg.”
“Shut up!” then to the boys, “It's not working. She must have gotten them all.”
“Or it's on a timer,” the dark-haired boy said. Hooknose, who had been watching the attractive redhead squirm on the floor, regarded the newcomer with cold eyes, but nodded. “Could be. But it's just chocolate. We can't live off that. You ask me, we're wasting our time messing with the box.”
On Willie's screen, Piggy stopped picking his nose.
“What should we do instead?” Playing dumb, just like me.
Blondie raised both of his arms. “Figure out how to get the hell out of here. I sure didn't ask to wake up in some weird building with a bunch of idiots. Someone's messing with us, and I don't let that sort of thing stand. I'm going up top, back to where I woke up, to look for an exit. Any of you want to come?”
None of them moved. Then, the dark-haired boy stepped forward.
“Let's go then. I don't like it in here any more than anyone else. Besides, if there's no more chocolate...”
To his right, Willie heard a tut-tutting and looked up. Mark, the who'd told Harry to go fuck himself. M LOWENSTEIN. “Bad move, Raggedy Andy. That boy's going to do something bad.”
“Sure is something, isn't he?” Gil asked, and winked. “Glad I didn't have to bring him in. He might have got me instead.” He looked at Willie. “What was it like, man? Catch of the year. How do you feel?”
“Like they suckered me a good one.” He forced himself to laugh, and got up from his chair. He didn't open his mouth about the kid, didn't make up a story to satisfy anyone's curiosity.
He’d been so desperate. And now this job, this trap. The kid hadn’t mattered in the face of his downward plunge, the blonde kid who'd almost killed him in the chase, who Willie had painstakingly kept alive (it had been a very narrow margin, that), who he'd brought in and been paid with money he might never be able to spend, depending on how things went here. So he said nothing, rested his chin on the palm of his hand and stood, watching the wall.
A minute later the three of the men who'd remained around the console were standing too - in a line in front of the wall projections, squinting at the two identical screens: The blonde and curly-haired boy's. The blonde had his arm around the other boy's shoulder, and was regaling him with stories of his street smarts. His other hand, they could all see, was balled into a fist. Harry was still pacing, but he wandered over when Gil sounded the alarm.
“Count it on your toes, Mark. Your boy's got less than one little piggy to live.” Gil laughed, and Mark said nothing.
“But here's the thing, buddy. I like you, a lot. On the outside, you and I would be best friends. Loyal and honest right down till the end, no backstabbing, no doing each others' girlfriends, you know. None of that.”
Raggedy Andy looked up at Hooknose. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Like I said, on the outside it might work out like that. In here...”
The fist shot out and Andy's head snapped to the side. He went reeling backwards and stepped right off the staircase and into the hollow center, where gravity sucked him down. The boy's screen image flickered as the feed was switched to each new camera – like watching a flipbook of a boy undulating in a gravity loop. Ten or so levels below, Andy's right leg was torn clean off as he twisted into a stairway. He screamed until his head made a red smudge on another stairway another six or so levels below that (one that made Willie think of the tips of his fingers when he ate raspberries), and then his limp body whiffled and thunked past the box and its chocolate balls and the bewildered animals it fed.
The children watched the body drop out of sight, and while the girls' faces were expressionless, Piggy nodded appreciatively. Willie, unsure of what else to do, noted this on his pad. Impressed with the death, or with the killing?
Raggedy Andy's screen was no longer being projected on the wall.
“Holy fuck.” Gil's eyes were glittering. “Did we all just watch that?”
Nobody said a thing, except for Harry, who echoed what Willie was thinking more and more. “They locked us in here so we would have to watch them all die.”
They turned toward him, expecting the wonder in the bald man's voice to lead into a monologue that would inspire fear or awe in them, because that's what a leader would do. But Harry was just Harry, and he said, “I'm starving over here, men. Let's find some food.”
It made the most sense out of anything he'd said so far.
What they found, after an increasingly frustrating fifteen minute search, could not exactly be called food. Willie supposed it was edible, after a fashion, but that didn't seem to be the point. The point was that they were being fucked with.
At the end of the shower room, just beyond where the last metal umbrella had chilled Willie numb, was a small door about six feet tall and a foot wide. It had a handle you couldn't make out right away, because it was stainless steel like everything else, and just a pull-tab sort of job. Behind the door, and they'd taken turns looking since the opening was so narrow, was a pneumatic tube and a button to push, just like at a bank drive-through. The tube was open at the bottom, and curved toward them like the bottom of a hockey stick.
“I tried to stop him, but he was too quick,” a faint voice said in his ear. “He said he couldn't stand it in here, being closed in like this. He had to get out. And then...”
“Do any of you have an objection to me pushing the button?” Harry said. Mark, Gil, Frank and Willie shook their heads. No objections. In his earpiece, Blondie finished his explanation: “And then he jumped. Just like that.” A girl was sobbing, probably Strawberry Fields Forever, and Piggy said something so low only Willie could hear.
“Yeah, I scream when I kill myself too.”
Harry pushed the button, and stood there, arms crossed, waiting with an impatience that begged to be repaid. A rush of air preceded the package, and Harry stepped back, but not enough. The glass jar FUMPED from the tube with a healthy amount of momentum, and struck the bald man in the right thigh, eliciting an equally healthy scream.
“Gaaaaaaaaauughfuckmotherfuck oh you bitch!” The jar spanged to the ground and spun harmlessly toward the opposite end of the room. Gil sprinted over to pick it up.
“Careful, retard. You don't know where that's been,” Frank said, and Harry clutched himself, squinting up at Willie through tears. “Fucker just about broke my leg, man.” Willie nodded, and tried to look sympathetic. “You'll be all right.”
The other three men were gathered around the jar.
“Some big joke, huh?” Gil.
“Hilarious.” Mark.
“They're feeding us goober?” Frank.
“Did you find an exit while you were up there?” Piggy.
“After he jumped, I was in shock. Sorry, I forgot about looking.” Blondie.
“At least...at least...you tried. Thank you for that.” Strawberry Fields.
“What the fuck is...goober? Goddamn that hurts.” Harry.
“Peanut butter and jelly. Swirled together in a jar.” Willie.
“Only this jar don't seem to have a lid.” Frank.
“It's got two bottoms. Glass, all the way around.” Gil.
Mark was the only one of them smiling. He turned to Harry, who was still doubled over in front of the little door. “Hey Harold, why don't you press that button again and see if a loaf of bread flies out?”
Harry raised a meaty middle digit, and waggled it. “Yeah, or a gun. A gun would be nice. I'd end you right here, Lowenstein. Give your Jewy brains something useful to do, like paint a wall.”
Willie’s eyebrows went up. If he’d brought his pad along, he would have scribbled “Observations => Harry. Skin-head.”
Mark stopped smiling. He frowned, and then backed away, gauging the zeal in Harry's eyes. What he saw must have been enough, because he turned and left the shower room without any sort of response.
“Cold-blooded, man,” Gil said, and whistled.
“Yeah? Maybe. But to those white-coats, we're all the same. Evil men, evil deeds. They locked you in here with me, remember?”
“I remember.” There was an edge in Gil's voice now, and Willie saw a bit of what Harry had been pointing out. Evil man, evil deeds. Willie felt a pang of something go through him. Fear, maybe. These weren't his friends.
Far from.
The hours dragged on, and by and by the others started bunking up. The children were safe for the time being, huddled around the box. Blondie had his arm around Strawberry Fields, and Piggy watched. Rhonda had gone to sleep, her shallow mouth-breathing becoming a snore as she lay sprawled across the platform. The light in the house of stairs was still on, still as bright and fluorescent white that Willie's eyes burned as he watched. There was no light switch in the bunk room, but the guys had rolled fabric from their jumpsuits around their knuckles and smashed at the thick bulbs until they'd busted. Sleep would be easier in the dark, but the bulb-busting also gave anyone with the desire a legitimate ambush site – he hadn't forgotten his place, or his company.
He was the only one left at the console, and he let himself stay that way for forty minutes before he stood up, stretching. His colleagues should be asleep by now. On screen, Blondie and Strawberry Fields had fallen asleep in each others' arms. Piggy was the only one left awake. A moment after Willie stood up, so did the subject of his observations. He stepped over the sleeping Rhonda, past the other two, and began to climb stairs.
“It's about time you got some exercise,” Willie said. He would have been more interested in the boy's actions, but he was tired. Unusually so, because of the anxiety that had been creeping in more and more as the day went on. He didn't care why Piggy was going up. He reached for the earphone, and heard someone say his name.
“Willie.” For a second he thought it was Piggy, speaking to him, even though the fat boy should have no idea that he existed. But the voice had come from behind him, near the bunks. He turned. Standing in the shadow of the darkened room was Mark. He stepped into the light, and Willie saw right away that there was a black piece of metal in his hand. A gun.
Willie dropped, pivoting to the left and trying to get his body around to the other side of the console, so he'd have something between him and the bullet when it came. Forget that he was already dead no matter where he moved, because there was nowhere to hide in the room of screens.
His heart was loud in his throat, and he counted off seconds and listened. No bullet came. No footsteps.
“Willie. I'm not going to shoot you.”
“Of course not,” Willie said from his crouch, “I don't know why the thought entered my head.”
“The gun is what I want to talk to you about.”
“I'd like to talk to you about it.”
Mark strolled around the console and sat on the floor beside him. He held the gun in both hands, like it was a bird that had crashed into a window and broken its neck. It was small and black, its barrel leaning forward, its grip punctuated with ridges. Willie recognized it – a Firestorm .22 caliber pistol. Ten rounds per magazine, eleven if you preloaded the chamber. He'd never had a handgun himself. They made things too easy, and too easy to fuck up. He was better at what he did with a birdshot-loaded-shotgun and a knife than most others were with the full spectrum of power tools. Willie Silverman didn't like putting holes in things he wasn't paid to.
“This was under my pillow,” Mark said.
“Loaded?”
Mark nodded, frowning. “Cocked, actually. Safety off. I put my hands under there and caressed the trigger. Almost blew my head off.”
“Harry?”
Mark shook his head, and his voice went even lower.
“I thought of that, but the idea of putting a loaded gun with the safety off under someone's pillow and expecting them to friendly fire themselves is just...stupid. So if someone wasn't trying to kill me...” He looked at Willie, eyebrows raised.
“Someone wants you to have it.”
“Someone is either very mean or very stupid. Having a gun doesn't help me. If the others find out...I'll have some explaining to do. No guns. It's in the contract.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“I don't know. You're still up. You're not _him._”
“Mmm.” Was there more to it? You wouldn't go tell your secrets to the town idiot, would you? Unless you thought he might be the only one who could help you. And then it clicked.
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“Well, the way I see it...I didn't bring a kid. I don't have a reason to be here. And if they go through my stuff, find the gun – I'd give it up, I don't want just anyone to have it, because bad things could go on. I was thinking you could take it.”
“You want me to take the gun?”
“Yeah, you have it.”
“No.”
“No?”
“You better keep it. You might need it.” Mark looked at him for a long time, and Willie looked back. Finally Willie got up and walked into the bunk room, leaving Mark alone on the floor with the gun. It was a decision he'd come to regret, because who knew how much trouble he could have saved himself had he had a gun. As it was, he was too tired to care.
The next morning Mark and the gun were gone, and the box was feeding the children balls of raw meat instead of chocolate. It gave much more this time, not stopping at three or even four, not seeming to stop at all. It sent a soggy sphere of bloody processed muscle down the chute each time they offered at the hole, and Willie couldn't understand why they kept doing it. There were piles of meat. Blondie looked dismayed, but only slightly. His economy of scarcity would be foiled if the box just gave and gave, although what kind of prize was raw, ground meat? Before long they were throwing it – at walls, down the shaft where Raggedy Andy's body still lay in a heap, at each other. Rhonda seemed most excited about this new game; Strawberry Fields was predictably least. Their white jumpsuits became a cheerful dark red. Piggy, out of sight of the others, (made possible by excusing himself to pee and descending several levels) crouched in a corner and stuffed two of the balls into his mouth. He chewed slowly, but with a workmanlike fortitude that Willie could only admire. Down here he wasn't stupid – down here, Piggy was a genius. Whatever plans he'd made swirled only in his head, however, and all Willie heard in his earpiece was the meat as the boy chewed.
The discovery that Mark was gone was met with only mild surprise, and Willie had been the only one to know of the gun, so that never even entered any discussion. Gil ribbed Harry as they milled about the shower room in the morning, struggling to wake up, joking that the bald man had something to do with their newly-trimmed number. Harry had simply looked out toward the console, and white slab of metal covering the door beyond.
“Figured a way out and didn't bother telling us. Probably just a big middle finger at me, for giving him a hard time.”
They'd checked it all, the doors, the locks, the slabs. All sound. In a place where it seemed nothing could happen without their noticing, a man had gone missing. A man with a gun, and Willie thought there was a chance the man had left that particular thing behind, hidden it somewhere. If that was so, he'd have to find it before anyone else. Just a few hours after he thought this, he saw the gun again.
The three remaining men and Willie sat around the console, the novelty of conversation long dead. The jar of goober had been smashed and they'd all taken turns scooping it into their mouths without a word. Willie ignored the jelly, forcing down peanut butter instead. He had a suspicion that if they went back to the little door in the shower room it would spit jars of meat swirled with potatoes or something equally bizarre. But they hadn't gone back, and that was all right with him.
The children in the screens had left the box in favor of exploring to the top level, where Blondie told them he'd hidden a ball of chocolate he would divide amongst them. They climbed the stairs slowly, and even their lithe leader and resident murderer seemed to be suffering the ill effects of the confined spaces and unfaltering fluorescence that the house of stairs afforded. Their dark red jumpsuits became a crusty ocher.
Then, as those in each captive group finally resigned themselves to the realities of their own individual Hells, the rules changed.
Raggedy Andy's screen came back on, and so was solved The Mystery of Mark and the Missing Gun.
He was on the bottom level, stepping over the dead boy's body in mock horror, arms and legs stuttering badly as he moved. Willie stood up, his mouth a dark hole. On the wall, Mark was a walking epileptic seizure, and then a climbing one as he graduated to the stairs.
“Good Christ,” Frank said, “What have they got him on? PCP?”
“He's got a gun too,” Harry said. They watched him struggle up the stairs, stopping every now and then to stare with buggy eyes at a camera. There was no doubt he was hallucinating.
“Holy shit,” Willie said, to himself or everyone. “This is all the same experiment.” Something in him dropped, like an elevator with a detached counterbalance. He'd been viewing this as two separate situations – two experiments, running side-by-side. The rats in the maze, and the cats in the cage, watching the rats run. But now...
“Oh fuck,” Gil said. “They're going to take us and put us in there with them, aren't they? One by one, and we're going to be tripping balls and defenseless. That's what's going to happen, isn't it?”
On the screen, it appeared Mark had begun to sing.
Later, after Blondie put the bullet in Mark's head, the box spit out a book of matches.
“What's it for?” Strawberry Fields asked.
“Cooking the meat,” Piggy said.
Nothing was good for starting the fire. Once they figured out how to light a match (the book had no strip and Blondie was left to strike it with his teeth) they were at a loss for kindling. The stairs weren't made of wood but some kind of compound plastic, and the box didn't burn either. They touched the second match to Mark's dead body and it went up like a frozen Christmas turkey in a deep fryer. They jumped back wooping, because the dead man's jumpsuit was flammable, and sustained its burn long enough for the children to half-cook their balls of meat on his smoldering ribs.
Back in the room of screens, Willie felt sick. When Mark started singing on their way to the top of the house of stairs, Blondie had stopped, head in the air like a dog on point. Then he'd bounded back down the stairs, taking them a level at a time in jumps, until he was regarding the mercenary with wild eyes. It only took him a second to see the gun and only a split-second more to leap over his stoned adversary and knock him forward into the stairs. The gun came loose and then it was in Blondie's hand. Willie didn't look away quick enough – he heard a distant POP through Piggy's microphone and Mark's head was all over the wall.
“It's too bad,” Harry had said. “I always kind of liked the guy.”
Now they were biting into the gray meatballs, though the insides were still red and dripped juice all down their fronts.
“It tastes like gas,” Rhonda said, holding her ball away from her. “Or like when I huff paint. I want the chocolate you hid upstairs instead.”
Blondie didn't say anything, and Piggy and Strawberry Fields kept chewing. Rhonda dropped the ball on the ground and started up the stairs.
“Don't go up there,” Blondie said.
“You going to stop me? What are you going to do? You wouldn't hit a girl, would you?”
“No.”
She kept going, and Blondie chewed his meat for a minute or so. Then he stopped. He looked at Piggy.
“You go up after her.”
Piggy, addressed by the bigger boy for the first time since he'd been taken down, looked around. There was nobody else.
“Go up after her and pull her back down here.”
“Oh. Sure I-” Blondie was on his feet, and his mouth was against Piggy's ear. Strawberry Fields wouldn't hear, but Willie and Frank both did.
“Get your rocks off if you want. Then kill her. Then bring her back down so we can cook more.”
Piggy got up. He started climbing the stairs after Rhonda.
“He's going to kill her,” Willie said.
“This doesn't feel good,” Frank said. He was leaning forward on the console, watching Rhonda ascend the stairs. “What happens when my kid dies?”
“You go in there,” Gil said. “Like Lowenstein.”
Harry laughed, sitting over by the blocked off door. He'd lost all interest in the screens, and his earpiece was still in its place at his fifth of the console, in front of an image that showed Strawberry Fields shucking her bloodied jumpsuit. On the wall, Blondie was doing the same.
“I wouldn't go to sleep tonight, if I were you,” Harry said, post-chuckle. “They came in last night and grabbed Mark, and I didn't even hear it. Did you? That's what you should be thinking about.”
Gil and Frank glanced at each other and then looked away. Willie looked down. They didn't know that he'd left Mark alone in the room of screens. And he didn't know what would have happened to him if the poor guy hadn't taken his place.
Frank spoke up. "If I get put in there, I'm going to kill them all. Drugs or no drugs."
On two screens, Blondie and Strawberry Fields were naked.
On another one, Piggy was scrambling up the stairs, panting. "Gotta get her before she finds it," Willie heard in his earpiece.
On the last screen, Rhonda was on all fours, sniffing the floor. "Where you at, chocolate?"
Harry walked up to Strawberry Fields' screen, licking his lips. Willie watched Rhonda get up, and totter to the wall where she put hands on it. "She can't find it. She's too dumb to find it," Piggy said. The little dot on the map that represented Piggy blinked, and rose another level. He was still five levels from the top.
"Get it girl," Harry said. He'd started rubbing himself through his pants. On the screen, the two bodies writhed like snakes.
Rhonda's hands found a vent on the wall, nearly invisible in the hard fluorescence. Her bloody fingers tugged at it, her mouth curving up at the corners, her eyes beady with greed. "You in there, I can smell you."
Her fingers slipped from the sides of the vent, so she pulled from the top. Nothing. Sweat started to ball on her nose. She tugged upwards, trying to grip the grated opening with her fingernails. To no avail.
Piggy was two levels below, clearly in position to stop the girl from getting to her prize, when she lost control of herself and kicked the vent. It popped off, clanging to the ground and just narrowly missing her feet.
"Oh fuck no," Piggy said, and launched himself up the stairs. He reached the top level, tears in his eyes, snot bubbling from his nostrils. Rhonda looked at him, smiling, her arm embedded in the vent. "I found where he hid..." Her eyes went wide.
Willie had seen electrocutions before. He'd been to a few, back when he was just starting out as a soldier for the government. It had been a matter of curiosity, this death-by-committee. The executioner hidden behind a drape, pulling a lever that ended another man. The whole thing was contained, sterile, and quick.
This was worse.
Rhonda's mouth opened and closed, and her cheek muscles twitched. She danced, bloody brown jumpsuit darkening as she lost her bladder. Her eyes rolled up, and blood poured from her ears. Piggy lay on the ground, staring.
The thing about electrocution that Willie had always wondered about was the amount of time it took. Maybe it was only fifteen seconds. Maybe it was double that. Whatever the actual duration, it lasted infinitely longer in memory.
Frank had his hands on his hips, and a moment produced a stream of goober and bile that covered the floor. Harry turned from Strawberry Fields' screen, frowning. "Come on man, why do you have to mess with a good time?" Then he threw his head back and laughed. Willie's hand involuntarily pantomimed a gun and his thumb, the imaginary hammer, dropped. Gil caught his eye and nodded.
Rhonda's eyes popped. Either she was screaming, or the energy pumping from the wall was using her lungs to eject a low warble that filled the whole facility. Then that stopped, and the smoking corpse just hung there, on the wall. Then her jumpsuit went up. Electrical blue fire, charring fat and whipping through her hair like a doll's head pressed to a lightbulb.
On Blondie's screen, he was laughing. He pulled Strawberry Fields' hair and slapped her. Then he picked up the gun and shot it into the air three times.
Harry clapped. The screens all went out, each a liquid retina of light pulsing and then winking into itself. The men stood staring at the wall.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! Gunfire from down below. So the other girl is dead, the chubby boy thought.
His time was running out. Piggy got up and moved toward the charred body, nostrils flaring. She smelled the way tin-foil tasted. And her hair! That had been the worst of it. It went up in a ball of green, a match head struck. He calculated. There would be time, not much, but enough if he moved quickly. The trap wouldn't trip twice, not with the girl's arm still clutching at something in the hole. Something she'd thought was the chocolate.
It wasn't the worst thought she could have had - the ball had been there at one point. Piggy had found it while the others slept. A smeared, melted ball tucked into an electrical grate. He'd eaten the chocolate right there, mashing his jaws together and swallowing. He'd found it easy, he had the best sense of smell, and it was warm at the top. It seemed much warmer now, standing over the roasted girl. The air this time was something, thicker. He could feel the cool air below, sucking at his eardrums and pulling him toward the middle, toward the tower of nothing. And so he went that way, dragging the girl's jellied mass. She didn't come apart on the floor, not exactly, but parts of her were left behind, like a skidding tire.
She wasn't supposed to fry. Blondie was the one who'd hid the ball, and he was the one who should have returned to it, plunged his hand into the grate and grabbed lightning. It hadn't gone that way, but it was too late now. That plan was over with, she'd ruined the trap by burning her shape into it. Piggy didn't curse, didn't dwell. He had to survive, and regret didn't enter into that. It was about adapting.
All light died. Piggy thought for a moment he'd jammed his eyes shut so tight that he'd blinded himself, but his eyes were open. He blinked, left hand sinking into an ankle. How far was he from the edge? In the dark it felt like he could have had his heels dangling. He felt her legs twitch, almost a kick, and he staggered back. He would lost it now, and to fight the momentum he dropped to his knees and leaned forward, crouching. Then lights came on.
The light moved across him in gray and brown, splayed across the walls in squares. Projections.
"Stop," Strawberry Fields said.
Blondie rolled off her. It was dark.
"What is it?" the girl said.
"I think the power - " The lights came on. On the wall across the shaft their outlines silhouetted. Blondie turned around and squinted into the shaft of dirty light. Was it over? When he was in elementary school, the teacher often turned the lights out when the class got too rowdy.
But the man in the coat had told him he could do anything he wanted. So then what-
"Look," Strawberry Fields said, "There's people." She was pointing at the wall where they were still silhouetted. He thought for a moment she meant them, and was about to tell her what a dumb bitch she must be, but then he saw: the projection was an image of four men, standing more or less shoulder to shoulder.
"Yeah, I saw them. Move out of the way so I can see the whole thing."
Strawberry Fields crab-walked toward him.
"The other way." The naked girl frowned, then crawled away.
Blondie surveyed the men on the wall. He recognized one of them. The one he'd been about to kill with a length of pipe before the tranquilizer took him too quickly out. When he'd awoken he was somewhere else with an IV in his arm and leather straps cinched at every joint. A man in a coat sat beside him.
After the man in the coat, he hadn't given the mercenary a thought.
The lips of of one of the projected men moved. There was a delay, but a moment later his voice came into the house of stairs, echoing tinny. "What just happened?"
Another pair of lips moved, and then: "The screens are dead."
The one he'd almost killed: "And I can't hear Piggy anymore."
That man pulled a small white plug out of if his ear.
"I can hear you," Blondie said. One of the men, one that reminded him of Steve Austin with piercings, turned away from the others.
"Bummer. I was just getting into that. If I'd known the girl was so dirty, I'd have spent a few more hours with her before bringing her in."
Strawberry Fields put her hand over her mouth. Blondie imagined things were starting to make the slightest amount of sense in her head. She'd have recognized the man who'd brought her here. She'd have realized he'd just been talking about her. Any moment now, she'd say something like -
"He was watching us. Those men saw what we did."
"Of course he saw. They've been watching us this whole time." Blondie smiled. The man in the coat had been telling the truth. He said he'd only let Blondie in on the secret, but the boy had been suspicious. Why run an experiment in which only one of the participants knew anything useful? But then, the man in the coat had told him,
"They're the control group. You're the free radical."
He'd liked that. And here, in the environment, he'd played up his role. There would be no jail time. The man in the coat had told him he was protected him from the consequences of any actions performed during the test, as it was expected that subjects would be under intense stress and couldn't be held responsible.
"Besides," the man in the coat had said, "Imagine us trying to explain our part of it. No, we won't. As far as all of us are concerned, anything that happens within the space of the experiment - or in the adjacent observation bunker - hasn't happened. Of course, there are hypotheses at play, and conclusions to be made, but following completion of the experiment, subjects will of course be free of any legal repercussions. What does that mean to you?"
Blondie had said, "It can be like a dream. Anything I want."
The man in the coat nodded and pressed a button on the end of a long wire. The boy felt a cold gush of something going into his arm and swirled into unconsciousness once more.
In the house of stairs, standing naked and watching the men, Blondie caressed the butt of the gun with his index finger.
The men had lost interest in the wall they had all been watching, and were now sitting down at a console. From the point of view the projected camera had, Blondie could see there were five spaces. Only four men.
And although he didn't quite know it, the weight of the gun in his hand seemed to confirm the thought that was only now blooming. There were four because he'd killed the fifth.
If only it had been the one who'd gotten the best of him. That one, Blondie would have gotten some real enjoyment out of. Blondie didn't despair. The man in the coat had already given him one, so maybe he'd still get his chance.
He turned back to Strawberry Fields, still grinning.
"Be a dog for me now, beautiful. They can't see us anymore."
Piggy heard the man on the screen (the projection played on every level, like windows that somehow showed the same vantage point, no matter the height) call him Piggy, and he curled his lip. He didn't like to be called Piggy.
On the information side of it, however, it meant the men in the projection didn't know his real name. Which meant they weren't responsible for what had happened to him. Or the curly-headed boy, or the mousy trap-tripper. Responsibility lay with Blondie. And with whoever had placed them all here.
He stored all of this in the back of his mind. Retribution was a luxury he couldn't afford. Not before survival. Fifteen levels above the remainder of his little group, he paused.
On the floor, he did fifty pushups with his breath held. The men in the projected room talked, and Piggy listened.
"Now we can't even do our jobs. How are we supposed to observe?"
"Come on, Gil. What jobs? We're locked in here. The kids in the tube were a distraction. They killed one of us."
"That hook-nosed fuck killed one of us."
"They put him in there with him. Doped, too. Couldn't even defend himself."
"How? They took him out of our room while we all slept?"
"No, couldn't be. One of us would have heard something."
Air forced its way into his lungs. The taste of it was worse than he remembered, chemical and thick. Hot. Piggy resisted the urge to vomit, then forced himself to his feet. Sweat oozed from his pores.
He was ready.
I don't know why I turned down that road last night, it was just an impulse. The crazy thing is how right it seemed. Like I was meant to. I was on my way home from my girlfriend's, my van thumping with the sound of Sir Mixalot proclaiming his love for the large female behind, speeding slightly as I was alone on the road. My mind was empty, and I, having made the trip so many times, trusted my subconscious to make my arms and legs move in their practiced combinations. It usually isn't until I'm unlocking my front door that I realize I don't remember anything past starting my van and pulling out of her driveway.
Last night was different. I was singing along, my anaconda don't want none unless you've got buns, hun, when I noticed I'd turned down a road I'd never been down before. I'd turned without thinking, down a road with no street sign. Normally I’d curse my stupidity and turn around, but I had some crazy urge to keep going. At the end of this road, I thought, will be my home. It didn't make sense, none of it. I knew there was no way this road could lead me there, but at the same time I knew for a fact that it could, and would. The song had ended, I must have turned the radio off but I don't remember doing it. I had turned down the wrong road, I knew I had, and yet I didn't want to turn around.
The yellow smudges on the road began blurring together and my van hummed and chortled, bouncing me in my seat. I don't remember caring. Just a little farther, I thought. I can get there, just a little longer.
That's when I almost killed a man. Almost ran him down. I came around a curve going maybe seventy and he was there. Tall, abnormally so, and standing in the middle of my lane about a hundred yards ahead. The heart that had been beating in anticipation of something that felt like home and safety now sent its energy in a new direction. Fear. The man, I thought. I'm not going to be able to stop. He’s not going to move. His eyes were open, he was watching my headlights with dull disinterest. It was up to me to save his life.
Fear, panic. They speed up time, enough so that I only remember the rough jerk that whipped my head forward when the van's wheels finally stopped rolling. The man was now engulfed in the light from my headlights about fifteen feet away. I saw for the first time that he was pale, an albino man dressed in a light grey suit. He stood, as I saw it, about eight feet tall. His hair, long and colorless, seemed to wrap around his head in protection. His hands were at his side and his feet were bare. His eyes were red, and even through the strong glare of my headlights he did not flinch. Even through it, his eyes met mine and my bladder emptied hot between my legs.
At the same time I knew there was no way the man could be looking at me, I knew that's exactly what he was doing. Don't go any farther, his stiff ashen face seemed to say. Leave. The urine soaking into my seat steamed up the windshield, and I jammed my foot on the brake as I switched gears. Then it was on the gas, and my head jerked forward again. I was accelerating backwards, eyes still on the man in front of me. He didn't blink. As soon as I could, I wrenched the wheel to the right and did the quickest three point turn I’d ever executed. Twenty seconds later I was going ninety miles an hour down that dark road, back toward the bigger one that would lead me home.
I took a shower and scrubbed my body raw. I turned the knob to scalding, and I sat on the fiberglass floor with my head between my knees for about an hour. The rhythm you don't notice usually, the slight pulses of stronger water through the showerhead, put me in a trance as they beat their predictable notes into the back of my skull. I don't know what I was thinking about, but there was something about the shower, of being there, that felt safe. When I stepped out, a little dizzy from the dehydration and muscles weak from their boiling massage, my skin was crimson. For five minutes, I was the first member of a new race, a red race. I stumbled into my bedroom and felt in the dark for my bed. It was there, and I fell into it, naked and steaming. For seven hours I slept, slept so completely that even the position I was in didn’t change all night.
The morning came like an unwanted visitor, the light through the window heating my skin and penetrating my eyelids. Sleep, and its dreams, was drifting steadily away, and there was no amount of effort that would let me catch it. So instead, I lay there blinking, going over what was real and what was not. The time spent in the shower the night before was but a second in my memory, a vague second, but the image of the albino man in the road was clearly burned there like a brand on a cow's side. Thinking of it now, drowning in sunlight, it still gave me chills. For what reason, however, I didn't know. The man hadn't seemed especially menacing. He hadn't shouted or demanded anything. He'd simply stood there, big and barefoot, with his mouth shut and his face stoicly set. His eyes, with their tinge of red, perhaps that had done it. It made sense. Seeing a man in the middle of the night with red eyes might have been frightening enough to... No, that still couldn't be it. Me, a man who dares to find even the highly touted horror movies worth hardly a yawn, should not have pissed himself over a pair of eyes.
Perhaps not the eyes, then, but what they did.
Yes. That had to be it. The man, he'd stared right through my headlights, meeting my gaze with a dull lack of interest. Perhaps there is something about albino eyes that makes it possible to look into most powerful lights. And then, when he'd had me there, looking into his eyes, he'd said more than would have ever been possible with his mouth. He wanted me to leave, to return where I came from. But why? It had to be the feeling. The internal magnetism, the one that made me turn down that road in the first place. He didn't want me to end up where I was headed. A warning? But he wasn't waiting for me, he was just there. Standing in the middle of the road like some suicidal lunatic.
It was too bizarre to think about. And especially before breakfast.
Google's results for albino eyes returned some interesting results, and not exactly the ones I was hoping for. Apparently those afflicted with ocular albinism (what often happens to eyes of an albino person) have eyes that are hyper-sensitive to light. And unless he was blind, this would not hold true for the man in my headlights. Furthermore, the very idea that all albinos have red eyes is a misconception. According to the major albinism sites on Google, patients with ocular albinism usually have green, blue, or brown eyes.
It could have been that he was simply blind, sleepwalking in the middle of the night. That would explain his barefootedness. No, what about the suit? And he looked into my eyes! There was no blindness. He might not have even been albino. But if not, then what was he? Some sort of giant? A guardian of whatever lay beyond? Was he trying to keep me from the treasure I knew was there? Hundreds of questions bubbled up through me.
Half an hour ago I decided I needed answers. The sun's light turned crimson, then a darker purple. Soon it had vanished beyond the trees and I started up my van. The smell of dried piss in the driver's seat reminded me of the horror I had felt the night before, and the way I'd panicked to get out of there. To get away. Hopefully I was better prepared tonight. I'd left a message on my girlfriend's machine, telling her I was going for a drive and to call the police if I didn't come back. It felt odd, doing that, because it made me realize just how endangered I felt.I pulled the gear shift into reverse and let my foot off the brake. Go back now, I thought. Just forget about the old man. You don't have to do this. But I did.
I pulled out of the driveway and now I'm on my way back there, to the road where anything seemed possible if only I could get to its end.
Time seems to have stopped for everyone else except for me. No one is on the roads, and my headlights bounce along the yellow dashes between the lanes as the road changes its pitch. The radio is off. My stomach is in a knot, half because of the old man, who I'm sure will be there as he was last night. It's his job to stop me or anyone who comes. The man who guards only at night, because during the day the road is just a road. At night...at night it comes alive.
The road I find easily enough, as that familiar pull catches me and tells me to turn. It seems stronger this time; I’m unable to resist. I think of a junkie sticking a needle in his arm, sure that his actions will kill him eventually but unable to do anything else. I flip my blinker on and make the turn, feeling suddenly as though everything has brightened. The knot of tension in my gut unties itself and a relaxing relief tingles through me. It's going to be fine; everything will turn out alright. All I have to do is reach the end of the road. There, all things will be answered.
The needle on my speedometer crawls higher, now at forty, now at forty-five. My heart is beating in ecstasy, and for the first time all day I crack a smile. This is it, my destiny. The needle shows sixty miles per hour. At the end of this road will be the meaning of all things, ready to be discovered. Seventy miles per hour. And I will be the one to do it. The lone explorer, with glory to gain and nothing to lose. Eighty miles per hour. Trees and fields blur past, and I don't care. Everything I ever wanted, and it's waiting here for me. Ninety miles per hour and now I can't contain my joy. I let out a loud whooping holler, knowing I won't need to worry about the man in the gray suit now. He can stand in the middle of the road if he wants to, but I'm not going to stop. A hundred miles an hour, the fastest I've ever pushed the minivan. But the engine roars, pleased at the challenge and hungry for more. And with my foot on the gas, I feed it.
I see a winking red light in the far distance which I'm sure is an airplane tower or something. Then the light takes shape inside a face, and I'm looking at the eyes of the man in the road. He's looking into my eyes and I'm touched by the absolute wrongness of the situation. And here he comes, sliding up the road at an incredible rate. He's going to hit me. But no, it's the van; I'm going too fast. The brakes. My foot releases the gas and touches the brake pedal. There is a slight reduction in speed. I press harder, against a pedal that pushes back to meet my force. The man is not moving, is not doing anything but staring at me. I'm a hundred yards away and there is no way I'll be able to stop. Both my legs are now straining against the pedal and outside I can hear rubber being torn from the tires. Beneath my feet the brake mechanism grinds, whining under the pressure. I look desperately from the speedometer to the man. I'm still at forty-five and the man hasn’t moved, maybe at this point only twenty meters from me. I'll hit him any second. Turn the wheel, I think. Go past him. It’s all I can do. I wrench the steering wheel to the left, both feet still on the brake pedal. The turn is sharp, and something happens.
When it's done happening I'm hanging upside down in my seat, blood dripping into my nasal cavity from my lip. Yellow green strands of field grass reach whimsically through the windshield, as if they'd grown there. My hands, nicked with pieces of glass, are still clutching the steering wheel. My feet are still on the brake. I've flipped the van, I know, but I don't quite believe it. When I see my reflection in the rear-view mirror (now perfectly in front of me) I quietly chuckle. Because there's no way this is right. Embedded in my forehead is a large and jagged piece of automotive window glass. It's joined so well that when I turn my head it moves with me. I bring my hand up to touch it, and when I try to wiggle it there's no give. The most I can figure is that it's fused to my skull, in so deep that no amount of wiggling will set it loose.
There is no pain, not how you'd think. Just a moderately dull ache, starting from the impact point of the shard of glass and radiating outward. And while looking at it protruding from my skull is interesting enough, I'm still upside down and the gravity reversal is making my head fill up with blood. I need to get out. My hands fumble with the seatbelt mechanism, and I'm trying to push the button in but it isn't working. There's too much weight on it. I'm pulling it, shaking and pressing and grunting with no success when a hand appears. It's large and pale, with fingers that look more like branches than phalanges. It reaches into my shattered window, touches me gently on the arm, and then moves to the seatbelt mechanism, pushing once, firmly, on the release. The seatbelt around my torso slackens, and I manage to catch my falling body with my arms, dropping me onto my stomach on the upholstered roof of my van. And I'm looking up, out the window, at the man who’d not moved from his position on the road until just now.
From this close up, the albino man's eyes are not red. They are a swirling torrent of colors, most so different from anything I've ever seen that red is the closest thing my brain can compare them to. His lips are drawn thin, pulled down on his elongated face in an expression that is more sadness and exhaustion than menace. He blinks, at once knocking me out of my intense observation. Then the branch-fingered hand, his hand, is coming toward me again. It touches me on the shoulder, delicately showing the comfort it means to give, and in one swift movement takes a hold of the crunched door of my van and pulls it away. Hinges scream and metal shears, and I'm no longer trapped. The hand is there again, hovering above me and cocked sideways as if asking, "Ready?", and I put my much smaller hand inside of it. He pulls me out. I lay, panting, on the grassy edge of the ditch.
"You should not have come here." The words are so fluid, so understandable and bright that each one forms a seperate rumbling image in my head. It's like a waterfall, the voice seemingly comprised of the millions of smaller ones, as if every living cell in my body and the in the bodies of every other being in the universe were speaking in unison. There's power in that voice, and sadness, and anger, and it's coming from the albino man.
I look up, into his face. Light from somewhere seems to break through his skin, casting a creamy glow about his visage that makes him at the same time real and not, at the same time ugly and beautiful.
My mouth is moving, and it's not until it stops that I register what emerged.
"What are you?"
The man looks away. The brilliant glow from his skin deepens, making it harder to see. The night had gone, this man forcing all darkness from us.
"I am many things. Tonight I am a guardian, a keeper. But that is not important. You were brought by the-” And then he, the bright man, says something my lacking human mouth would be unable to repeat.. Still, I am brought to perfect comprehension by the image of the thing at the end of the road that seems to be everywhere. The image comes from him, I know that.
"This place, this path, is one of the few ley lines between this world and the next. However, the word place does not exactly fit. Because this road is less a tangible place than it is a being. The same way an ant lion lures prey into it's pit, this line lures souls. And if I had stood aside just then, and let you pass, you would continue on into a place you don't belong. It is not your time yet, and I am here to keep you from getting any farther. Any farther and you would not be retrievable." He looks back, into my face, and as if responding to some deep need, I stand up. My nose reaches the height of the middle button on his silvery suit jacket. His hand, coming from his side, shoots to my face and light flashes.
It's over in an instant, whatever it is, and my vision clears. He's holding in his hand a shard of glass. It's the one from my windshield, the one from my forehead. Then he closes his palm and when he opens it again all I can see is a small pile of sparkly white dust. I put my hand to my forehead, feeling for the place the shard had been. The cut I was looking for wasn't there. The skin had knit over the hole, the bone beneath barely telling anything had ever been there.
"My job is to make sure no one who enters this line gets past me. This road is a false caller, and left on its own would devour many who have yet to make their mark on the world. It's a being that, over centuries, evolved into this form to appear familiar. It was once a path in the wood, and then it was a dirt road, and now it is the very asphalt on which you stand. The reason you hadn't noticed this road before was because before yesterday, it wasn't here. The road, it's a traveler. And I follow, to prevent the loss of souls to its siren song. I suppose, one day, it will grow too weak to continue its feeding. When it does, my task is complete."
Already the brilliant glow enveloping myself and the man is dissipating. The unreality of it all is not. And yet I still have the presence of mind to speak.
"Thank you."
The sadness in his smile tightens the muscles in my throat; makes my chest hurt. He bows, slightly, and brushes past me. The light radiating from him pulses with each step he takes; I can see every little bit of energy he uses. He lays his hands on the crumpled bulk of my van and the world explodes. It's cold, white light that makes my hands go in front of my eyes, and still it's so bright that the protection my hands give is like staring at the sun through the turquoise plastic of a visor. I’m sure that if this place were centered somewhere in my world, the living world, the light from this one source could be seen from the depths of space.
Then it is over, and my hands fall. He's kneeling near the van, now whole again, and for a moment I think he's been drained. But then he stands up quickly, two branch-fingered hands bringing the roof of the overturned van to it's original position. He glances back at me, then, reaching under the front hood for a handhold, drags the three ton vehicle out of the ditch and back onto the road.
I'm unable to move, unable to speak. He nods in my direction, his eyes saying many things but mostly just goodbye. He turns. The tall man, no, I can’t call him that because he’s no more a man than I’m a blender; this celestial being strides down the road, in the direction I had been traveling just minutes before. He shrugs his shoulders mightily, and a tip of something white like his suit and bright as his eyes slips out the bottom of his suitjacket and is just as quickly pulled in again.
It's the angel's wingtip, I think. And five minutes after I can no longer see him, I start up my van and begin my journey home.
He was waiting for the train long before I walked up. The bill of his ball cap reached down across his dark face and he sat slumped for heat on the bench, puffing his breath out in icy little balls.
“Cold one tonight, my brother?”
He nodded without looking at me, and folded his wrinkled brown hands across his lap. He looked down the track squinting.
“Train’s comin’.”
The train station was empty but for us, the only light shining down in a column from a single covered bulb poking into the darkness.
I nodded, and looked where he’d looked. A single light flashed on and off in the distance. “It may well be, brother. There’s an ice storm coming as well. Where are you headed?”
He lifted his capped face to me then, and seemed to grin. “I’m goin’ home, mister. Back to New Orleans. My life here is over.”
“Chicago’s a Hell of a town,” I said, tipping a hand back toward the great mountain range of lights that sat behind us. The man chuckled and shook his head.
“Chicago’s no town, sir. No, no sir. It’s a cold dead hand, a rake. It’s a smilin’ man at a roulette wheel. It’s a promise that leaves your hat and your pockets empty. It’s an alley full o’ dashed hopes. But now it’s a past - my past. Cause the train’s comin.’”
“It may well be, brother. It may well be.”
He slid his slumped figure to the left and patted the seat beside him. “Here, mister. Got it all warm for ya.’”
A cold wind howled down the track, and the lights of the oncoming train continued to blink in the distance. I sat down. The man turned his body toward me.
“You leavin’ too?”
I nodded. He nodded in return, then turned his attention back down the track. “It’s been down there like that for a long time. Must be another stop. Must be. But it’ll be here soon.”
We sat there like that, watching the lights, for several minutes. Me and a man whose heat was slowly leaching from his pores.
“While we wait,” I said, breaking the silence, “I have a story. If you’d like to hear it.”
The other man nodded and the white of his teeth lit up the space between his dark lips as he opened them. He spoke, jaws clenched, each word hissing into the night with a steamy visual counterpart. “If it’ll make the train come faster, please. Tell.”
I cleared my throat and began, wasting no time.
“Seven years ago, I came to this train station. I met a man here, on this bench. He called himself the Lip. Leather-Lip Lightman. He was waiting for the train, said he was leaving Chicago. I told him the train had shut down the day before, and that it wouldn’t be coming. Not that night, at least. It was a cold night, and the Lip wasn’t well-dressed. I asked him if he had a place to go. He told me he wasn’t going anywhere. The train’ll come, he said. The train’ll come. He said he could see its lights. An hour or so passed, and I asked him to come with me. There’s an ice storm coming, I said. I can keep you for the night, and tomorrow you can come back if you still want. The train isn’t coming. But the Lip shook his head. It’ll be here. And when it comes, I’ll be on it. And Chicago will be behind me. Chicago, he said, was a cold dead hand. A rake.”
The man next to me nodded in agreement, as if he himself hadn’t said the same thing just minutes before.
“A rake, it sure is.”
“And so, with parting words to the man, I left, hoping he’d come to some kind of sense and find somewhere warm to spend the night.”
I paused here, and stared down the tracks. The blinking lights seemed to have come closer. Faintly, on the wind, I could hear the muted sound of a train’s whistle. The dark man with the ball cap had his full attention on me, however. His eyes were wide, the brilliant whites of them watering against the dead cold.
“You came back, didn’t you? You came back an’ he was gone, wasn’t he?”
“I came back. In the morning, after a thin layer of ice had coated everything slick, like glaze on a doughnut. The man who’d called himself the Lip was not on the bench.”
“See, I knew it.”
“He wasn’t there, and he wasn’t at any of the other benches. I figured he’d gone. At that point I’d turned, turned to walk back out to my car, and I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A man-sized totem, that’s what I remembered thinking. I looked back and there he was. A tall figure, the Lip, standing alone way down the line. Standing along the tracks. So I walked to him. I walked to him and said, “Cold one this morning, my brother?” And I touched him, on his shoulder. Only it wasn’t like touching a man. He was hard, slick. My hand slid off. I came to realize he was frozen there, frozen to the ground. Icicles grew from the corners of his dead eyes, and his smile was painted on with frost.”
I ended my story there. The dark man with the ball cap squinted at me, raising first one eyebrow then the other. When he decided he believed me he cleared his throat and looked toward the ground.
“Hell of a story, mister. Whale of a tale. Jesus.” He looked back up at me. “Poor bastard didn’t even get to ride the train.”
I shook my head. “That’s not it. That’s not it at all. You see, brother, I’m quite sure the Lip’s train came that night. Came in the middle of the ice storm. The story isn’t that he didn’t get to ride the train. The story is that when he got on, he left his body standing right over there.” I pointed. The dark man in the ball cap followed my gaze, shivering.
“You see brother, that train? Those lights, and their whistle on the wind?”
“I see it, mister.”
“That’s not your train. That’s the Lip’s train. That’s my train.”
“What are you -”
“You’re leaving Chicago for New Orleans. I’m leaving Chicago for nowhere. That’s the difference. Be wise, brother. Leave now. Anyone with a life still to live should be elsewhere. The tracks are closed for you tonight.” The train’s whistle sounded, and the dark man jumped.
“Jesus Christ, mister. You’re scaring me.” He searched my face for some kind hint of jocularity, for some sign I was pulling his leg. He found none. He took a last look down the tracks toward the approaching lights and rose to his feet.
“I think...I think I’m in the wrong place. It was...nice to meet you.”
“Have a good night, brother,” I said after him as he fled into the darkness.
The wind howled down the tracks, licking over the cool steel ties and sucking the moisture from my eyes. My mouth pulled back into a cool smile. It was time. I stood up and walked to the platform, and as the train pulled up to greet me
The ice storm began.
It begins, each day, with a boy.
On Wednesday the boy’s name was Jenkins. It was either his first name or his last, as it was embroidered into the back of his baseball cap; a ratty red thing with a big white A on the front. Thumbs in his pockets, eyes on the ground, he kicked idly at pebbles. It was in this fashion that Wednesday’s boy reached the wall at the end of Monk’s Head Alley – and stared down into the hole.
Monk’s Head Alley, being blind, led nowhere but into a man-sized hole at the bottom of a thirty-foot-high wall of windowless red brick. The hole led into a complicated system of passages below the city that, if traversed correctly, would lead back out into any of a plethora of other alleys that ended in similar fashions throughout San Diego. That particular Wednesday, seven different boys had walked idly down alleys just like this, alleys that stretched for half a mile with no other outlet. No space between buildings, no roads, nothing. But always the feeling that the alley had to lead somewhere, or it wouldn't exist at all. This is why each day, a number of boys would then find that themselves faced with a choice – turn on heel and make it back round the long way to wherever it was they belonged, or pull out a penlight and brave the hole.
Jenkins, for example. Just twelve years old, he'd convinced his mother to let him take the bus downtown to see a movie. It was a horror flick, something about zombies from outer space, and he'd enjoyed it. Journey half over, he'd stepped onto the bus home and, after four or five stops, became aware that a group of unruly teenagers were taking an unusual interest in him – and not a favorable one. He didn't know what they were planning, but his thick-rimmed glasses and scrawny build had always seemed to encourage bullies and Jenkins knew better than to let the situation play out. At the next stop he quietly slipped off the bus and by the time the five hooligans were able to get up and off as well, he'd vanished through the crowded sidewalk and down the first alley he saw. Although he couldn't possibly have known where the alley headed, (or that it even had a name) he figured, as every boy does, that it would come out somewhere, and from there he would find another bus home. It was a simple foregone conclusion and was, just as simply, wrong.
The other boys' reasons for entering the alleys varied; their destinations differed. They were coming from and going to baseball games, dates with girls, libraries, home. It never seemed to make a difference; the boys who wandered down these dead ends were as random as the alleys themselves. But they were always boys. And every day, one or more of them would choose the hole. On Wednesday, Jenkins was one of these.
Half of it was a circular absence of wall, and half of it a sinking depression of the concrete he stood on. It was dark inside, and he heard running water. He didn't remember how long he'd been standing there. About a moment after he realized what he was about to do, he imagined his mother's voice in his head, telling him that if he had any sense at all, he'd turn around right now and march right back out of this alley and right back onto the next available bus, mister. And Jenkins didn't lack for sense – it was just, well, he didn't feel like being beaten and robbed. He imagined the five boys waiting for him at the end of the alley, laughing because they'd known it was a dead end the whole time and perhaps coming up with new and interesting ways to deal with him when he came back out. In his mind, several of those ways ended up with him in the hospital. He would start through the hole instead, and if it got too scary he would turn around and go back.
The first canvas-sneakered foot dropped in with a plunk, and the other followed. Jenkins was standing just inside the mouth of what appeared to be a long passage, narrow and stone the whole way round. He took two deep breaths, one as water seeped in cold around his ankles, and another as he flicked the penlight from his keychain on and took his first steps into the tunnel.
Sorry Mom.
The first thing that struck him, of course, beside the smell of moldy rot and the damp push of the air against his cheek and the intense wetness of the dark, was a rat making way for the exit. It ran full smack into Jenkins’ leg before recovering and continuing on. Jenkins, being Jenkins, screamed. His voice echoed down the hole and off the walls and then back at him, distorting his voice until he was sure the sound coming back to him had an altogether separate source. He might have screamed again, but he was Adam Holwerda / Wednesday’s Boy/ 4 too frightened. Then, laughing nervously at himself, he forged on. Several other rats made their way past him without incident, paddling against the current. The water was only two inches deep, but it washed down over his ankles and soaked through. He was going to need some new socks when he got home. His sneakers began squench as he made his way, a squench that echoed off the walls and got him accustomed to the acoustic dynamics of the tunnel.
When he came to the first fork, he went the way that felt most like home, trusting that if this path went dead he’d find his way back and take the other. But it didn't die; instead, the passage went on, curving and sloping downward as the tiny stream flowed faster past his feet. He saw rats with decreasing frequency as he descended, which was fine by him, because wet they looked like skeletons with hair, and he didn't like the way their eyes reflected the light from his keychain.
Some minutes later Jenkins came to another fork, and felt the unfortunate feeling that perhaps he should go back and try the other path. No, he thought. He'd take another turn, and if he still hadn't been brought anywhere he would turn around and find his way back out. Two turns were easy enough to remember. At the next fork some nine minutes later he went through the same thought process. But three turns were easy enough to remember and so he chose a path and continued on.
The water flowed slower here, he noticed, but at the same level. Odd, because the slope had not slackened; in fact, he was fairly sure he was leaning even further back in his stride than he had been just minutes before. The stream crawled along his soles like dark jelly, and at first he thought he was walking on a new kind of sludge, but it had rolled off his fingers like water should when he'd tried to scoop some up. It had smelled like water too, and though he wasn't stupid enough to taste it, Jenkins convinced himself what he was seeing was an optical illusion. He put it out of his mind and kept on.
Two forks further on he realized he was already late - that it was no longer time for games and that if he didn’t want a spanking he’d have to hurry, and damn it all if the gang of boys saw him. He turned back and made the opposite progression of turns, finally coming to the point where he felt he’d find the original tunnel leading back to the alley. A final right and he would be home free. He took the right and ran full out, feet slapping against shallow pooling water and then dry stone as he anticipated the entrance at the end of the blind alley to embrace him with open air at any moment.
Instead, his feet sank into the ground and he fell face forward into a pool of dust and came up choking and rubbing his eyes. His glasses had gone from his nose and he wriggled in the dust searching for them but in the end his hands were empty. For a moment he thought he must have hit a patch of ground he missed on the way in, a sandbox of dust, but when he shone his penlight around him and squinted through the cloudy air he found he was in a room. It was circular, or almost so, and he saw it had several openings all leading down new lengths of tunnel. He’d gone the wrong way, taken a wrong turn at some point, and now he’d found a tunnel hub. He’d retrace his steps and find the real way out. First he had to find his glasses. With the light to guide his sifting hands he plunged deep into the dust and imagined that the next moment would find the spectacles in his grasp. But the next moment passed, as did the next.
He was not going to find them. Sobbing, he picked himself up and turned around, making his way from the room of dust and back into the tunnel he’d thought only moments before was his salvation.
He ran blindly, tearing through the tunnels and turning into the forks he’d followed, hoping desperately he’d see or feel a familiar thing. A patch of moss or trickle of water that would give him his bearings. A rat, even. But nothing was familiar and as he ran he became certain that he was only going deeper, that he would find his way out only by luck. He prayed for familiarity as he navigated forks at random, panting and sobbing as his feet, soaked through, squenched against the rock floor. Then, at last, he was rewarded, as they sunk, once again, into a sea of dust. He’d found the room again.
This time, after a moment of surprise, he sank to his knees against one of the walls and prayed. He prayed until it had to be dark outside, until his stomach rumbled and his bladder wouldn’t hold any longer. He prayed that he would find his way out, that someone would come (his mother he thought, or the police...someone had to come, although he’d made sure not to let on where he’d gone). He prayed and continued to decide he’d try again, but secretly he feared he’d become even more lost - and besides, which of these openings would he take? It’s not as if he knew which door was the original through which he’d stumbled...and even then he hadn’t found his way out before...and by this time all the praying had wiped the directions from his memory. Besides, the dust was warm. It shielded him from the dampness of the air, the bite of the slow breeze that seemed to come from every opening. He kept vowing to try again, kept praying for salvation, kept sinking further into the dust - until he finally fell asleep.
Some time later he awakened, ecstatic at the prospect that it had all been a dream, that he was safe at home. But no: it was real. And the penlight on his keychain was dying. He clicked it off to save the battery and began to sob as he had before, no longer praying; at this point his pleas became a choked and repeated cry for his mother that echoed through the tunnels and found the ear of another boy, who had been going round and round his own set of tunnels for hours and was only now beginning to feel the dull pain of despair. A minute later the other boy’s penlight shone on Jenkins, and the sobbing halted as he jerked his head up in surprise.
“Who is that? Are you here to rescue me?” He hastened to his feet as the other boy turned the light on himself.
“No, see? I’m lost too.” The boy’s face was smudged, a filthy Dodgers cap hanging sideways off a ragged mop of blonde hair. He moved slowly over to Jenkins, putting a hand on the smaller boy’s shoulder.
“My name’s Willy. Willy Pilgrim.” Jenkins sniffled and told the boy his name as well, and they both sank down against the wall.
“I’m glad to see someone else down here,” Willy said with a slight cough.
“I was starting to think I was going crazy, that this was all in my mind. But now, you. Can you imagine what sort of coincidence this must be? Two boys lost in the same set of tunnels on the same day. You know, I bet it’s never happened before.” Jenkins wiped at his eyes with a dusty finger and sniffled.
“Yeah I guess it's pretty weird. I’m glad to see you too I suppose.” He thought about his home, about what his mother must be thinking, and he quickly added, “But we’ve got to find a way out of here, you know.”
“Sure, sure. You know, it’s really not so bad in here, in this room. Almost sort of comforting. Like a beach at night, when the sand is still kind of warm and the waves just kind of lap at the shore like a dog drinking out of a toilet. Kind of nice like that, you know?”
Jenkins sniffled again, remembering how he’d fallen asleep in the dust.
“Still, Willy, we got to leave. Don’t you got a home to get to?”
Willy chuckled. “Ha. Oh, not me. I’m an orphan. Only people gonna miss me are Mr. Tibbs and Gina the Orphan-Beater, and if you ask me they can both go suck on a rusty nail and die of lockjaw.”
“But...but you want to get out of here, don’t you?”
“Well hell, of course I do. Just...I ain’t sure there is a way back out.”
“What do you mean?” Jenkins' saliva glands began to pump.
“Well, you see, when you came in here you probably picked your turns at random and told yourself you’d remember what they were and that you’d just turn back and do the opposite, yeah? And when that didn’t work, you just figured you’d screwed up and missed a turn somewhere, yeah? So you’re still pretty sure there is a right way out of here. I think there is too, but me, I don't think that way is anything for us to find.”
“Why not, Willy?”
“Because when I started in on these tunnels and came to a fork, I chose the right one. And at the next fork, I went right again. And again and again I kept going right, and the tunnels kept sloping down and after a while I knew I didn’t really want to be down here anymore. You see, I figured at some point if I went down far enough I’d have to hit the sewer system, yeah? Only I never did. I’m not talking about these tunnels like I think they’re any sort of sewer system either. I mean the real sewers. The ones that smell because of the gas that comes off all the crap and makes the air warm so it steams coming out of the manholes in the morning. Anyway, I started to get worried about how far down I was and if I’d ever see a tunnel leading out again. So I turned around and this time I went left left left. Twenty lefts. Thirty. More lefts than the rights I remembered taking to get where I was in the first place. And the crazy thing wasn’t even that I hadn’t found my way out yet.”
The older boy paused.
“What was it?”
“The crazy thing was that the whole time I was taking my lefts the ground kept sloping downward.” Jenkins let the words hit him. The way he felt then reminded him of the time he’d had his face pushed into the mud by his schoolmates as they told him everything he thought he knew was make-believe. No Saint Nicholas, no Easter Rabbit, no Tooth Fairy either. And the mud had filled the gap in his gums which had started the teasing which had started the death of the magic in his life. Now, it seemed, some of the magic had returned - but this time replacing reality...an unwelcome intrusion at the most inconvenient of times. The boy beside him sifted through the dust and whispered to himself.
“What a colossal friggin' coincidence.”
They sat for a long time, Jenkins asking again if the boy named Willy Pilgrim would go looking for a way out with him and the orphan putting a hand on Jenkins’ knee and saying if the younger boy didn’t believe him they could go and if he did that he’d rather get some sleep. Jenkins wasn’t sure what he believed, but he could tell from the tone in Willy’s voice that there was only one answer to give. So he gave it, and utterly unwilling to be alone again he settled in beside his new companion and closed his eyes. Soon after, he’d found his way home through wishful dreaming.
Time was fluid in the dust room. Relative to the room, no time at all might have passed. Relative to the ache in Jenkins’ bones as he awoke again, and the rumble in his stomach, he’d passed somewhere near eighteen hours in the darkness.
Willy was sitting cross-legged next to him when Jenkins next awoke, staring into the beam of his own light as it played across his face. When he saw the younger boy was awake, he gave a quick smile and pulled himself to his feet.
“Come with me.”
“You found a way out?”
The light danced away from Willy's face and down one of the tunnels, but not before Jenkins saw the flash of anger there.
“I told you already, there ain't no way out.”
“I just thought-”
“We're going to get some water.”
They walked up into the tunnel. Willy pointed his light at the ground.
“Take a look at this.” He knelt down. Jenkins looked where he was supposed to be looking. All he saw was where wet rock met dry rock.
“What is it?”
“Something is missing from this picture.” Jenkins squinted.
“You know, I can't really see too good without my-”
“Gravity is missing. You see how this tunnel slopes downward into the dust room? And how water is flowing down all of the tunnels? How the heck does it stop here? It should be flooding that room. But every tunnel connecting to it has a wet-dry line just like this. Like the streams slowed down and slowed down, and finally were going so slow they stopped. What do you make of that?”
Jenkins opened his mouth to tell of the way he'd noticed the stream change on his way down, but apparently Willy's question had been rhetorical.
“Friggin' weird, that's all I'll say. Here, drink some of this.”
The next fifty hours (days? years?) passed in the darkness as they tried to save batteries. Jenkins spent most of his time looking for his glasses and cried often, and Willy tried to cheer him up with jokes he knew and games to pass the time. For the most part it worked, but once the severe hunger had set in the boys mostly just sat quietly. Jenkins' coping mechanism was sleep, and so he often dug himself half into the warm dust and let himself drift off. He'd wake dehydrated and lightheaded, and would have to drag himself up a tunnel to drink. It was from one of these blocks of sleep that he woke and, as Willy Pilgrim might have put it, something was “missing from this picture.” And that something was Willy himself; the older boy was gone.
“Willy?” he asked, once he'd become aware of the absence, and then asked louder, and then yelled, but there was no answer but the inhuman roar of his own voice returning to him through every corridor connecting to the rounded room. This time he didn't cry. He put his head against the wall instead and began to doze, his hunger manifesting itself in a variety of surreal fantasies. At the moment he was galloping on the back of a horse made of fried chicken, biting into its shoulder as he spurred it on.
A sharp noise rocked him full awake. The mouthful of warm honey-glazed bird turned back into the dust it had always been, and he ejected it with a series of sputtering coughs. The sour taste it left made him gag, and soon the mixture of saliva and dust in front of him was covered in bile.
The noise came again, the sound of rock hitting rock. He gasped to catch his breath, so that he could speak.
“Willy?” Jenkins fumbled for his penlight and flicked it on - the dying beam fell on a hunched figure that was not Willy - was not, at least, that same nice boy so interested in coincidence and the Dodgers ball team, though it may have looked like him. Jenkins saw now that the Willy thing clutched a stone club almost a meter long, and, realizing it had been seen, haltingly began trying to explain.
“I'm never going to get outta here. And I don’t wanna starve to death, but I’m just so hungry I can’t hardly stand it. I just...I just needa eat so I can live long enough to figure a way out...or a way to end it. I just needa...eat.”
The Willy thing raised the club over his head and that was when Jenkins realize the thing Willy intended to eat was him, and that he was probably about to die.
The penlight’s beam flickered and died and they were both plunged into darkness.
Jenkins heard the other boy’s frustrated cry and his feet pounding against the dust as he charged. Desperately Jenkins rolled aside, and Willy’s battle-cry and the club met the wall.
CRACK!
Jenkins didn’t dare move. Then there was a sputter and a gulp, and a dying boy whispering in the dark.
“I guess that’s it then. If you ever see him, tell Mr. Tibbs he can...tell him he can suck a rusty nail...”
Jenkins sat huddled in a mound of dust, idly clicking the switch on his penlight, hoping that for just a second he could see what had happened to the boy he’d at first thought his friend. Eventually, the bulb flickered on for a moment before dying forever and the scrawny boy got his snapshot. It seemed the club had split in two upon hitting the wall and the newly sharpened edge had been driven like a spear into Willy’s chest. On his face, Jenkins swore he saw a sick sort of contorted smile.
From then on, every effort the boy made was made in order to leave the dust room behind and rejoin the land of the living. He found his glasses, and then in Willy’s pocket, the older boy’s penlight. The recovery of the spectacles had been a happy moment, for it seemed that the same action that had him darting away from the fatal blow from the club had also unearthed them from the dust. He’d been crouched there, in the dark, viewing in his mind the image of dead Willy when his toes had brushed them. The glasses were only slightly bent, and both of the lenses were intact. He was more hopeful than ever then, as he'd felt useless without them, and now that he’d found them he felt like he might even find the way out. But he’d have to be smart.
He started by unraveling Willy’s pants with his teeth. He tied all the threads together and wrapped one end of the new thread around his waist and the other around the dead boy’s neck. Then he walked the tunnels, measuring and marking the forks and writing directions on the wall of the dust room with dust. He marked off the tunnels he’d already tried and continued on probing into each one, looking for a path that led up and out. He did this for what felt like several days. He drank the water from the tunnel floors but the hunger had all but beaten the life out of him, so he ate the only eatable thing. He thanked the dead orphan for the idea.
He chose Willy’s upper thigh as it had the most meat and, besides, he imagined if he was going to be eaten he’d want whoever was eating him to start at the legs. He tried not to think too much about taste or texture - he just chewed until he could swallow. With the strength Willy gave him Jenkins soldiered on, working at his goal with the fervor of someone afraid of going crazy with any moment of inaction, although he needed to sleep at regular intervals. That part of it became the worst, the cruelest, as his dreams tortured him with images of his parents, his house, and his schoolmates. Every time he woke up he felt like crying, but he never did anymore - mostly he just crawled over to Willy and had a bite or two to eat. He’d had to switch legs, and then move onto the arms, as it seemed the exposed meat began decomposing quicker than if it was still covered with skin. But even that meat was starting to taste rotten. The penlight kept getting dimmer and his expeditions became more frantic.
Finally he awoke for the last time in the dust room. The penlight was dead and Willy was rotted half away. He felt as if he’d lived a month in the room, but perhaps it had only been two weeks. Perhaps even less. It was the end of his time in the dust room at least, and when Jenkins shuffled down the corridor he’d chosen he left the string and the light behind.
He never returned.
In the dust room beneath the city, Willy’s body decomposed as all bodies do, leaving behind in the eventual way only a skeleton, and in the even more eventual way only dust, adding to the previous accumulation. Hundreds of millions of years might have passed in the room, but to any entity unstuck in time it might only have been a few hours; an afternoon. Soon enough the cycle would begin again, and the room would go on collecting pilgrims, and the dust they became.
It begins, each day, with a boy.
On Thursday the boy’s name was Porter. It was either his first name or his last, as it was embroidered into the back of his baseball cap; a ratty dark blue thing with a big white D on the front. Arms swinging gaily at his sides, curious eyes scanning the alley walls, he trotted along. It was in this fashion that Thursday’s boy reached the wall at the end of Demon’s Heart Alley – and stared down into the hole.
It was an autumn night, after the sky had dispensed with its technicolor fireworks and was overtaken by consecutively darker shades of blue, temperature dropping more considerably than it had even weeks before, and the old man opened the door of his old house to welcome another, younger, suspect.
“Mr. Winters,” the younger man said, extending a hand. Winters shook it, his grip exceptionally strong for a man of his age. He peered through thick spectacles down at the man on his doorstep, and he smiled in recognition of the boy he’d known years before.
“Speck! David Speck, dear boy, look at you now. All grown up, no joke. And I see you’ve brought wine as well,” Winters said as he spotted the oblong object resting in the crook of Speck’s arm.
The younger man’s smile mirrored Winters’, his eyes sparkling with memories of another time.
“Oh, this? Don’t get excited; it’s only white wine. A dry German Reisling. Professor, you look better than I’d hoped!”
“I’ve aged well. Now please, come in; we’ve been apart too long to be content holding a conversation on the front step.”
Winters stepped aside and Speck, in a light coat and gray slacks that complimented his equally ashen eyes, stepped up and through the threshold.
The two, awkward at first, quickly fell back to their comfortable roles; teacher and student together again after twenty years. A bucket was rooted out and filled with ice, and the wine sat chilling on the table while fond voices took turns in the living room.
“I see you’ve got quite a few of my books,” the younger man said, looking about. A bookshelf dominated one wall, a middle shelf showcasing several thick hardbacks. Winters smiled.
“Yes, well. You have got a knack of sending them to me. I would buy them, you know. Be proud to, but you won’t let me.”
“Maybe because I know there’s no point in you buying something you’re not going to read.”
Winters, crumpling a newspaper for fireplace kindling, feigned offense.
“David! How little faith you have in your old friends. I’ve read them all, and expect to do so again. I love finding characters that remind me of myself, and then I wonder...”
“If they’re based on you? Of course, I take qualities from all over, but every once in a while I’ll write a character that, in my mind’s eye, is you. Don’t gloat; I do that for a lot of people.”
Once the fire was lit and sustaining itself on a steady diet of dry worm-eaten logs, Winters eased himself into the easy chair opposite his student. The conversation resumed cheerfully, both parties goading the other without pause.
“Yeah, that’s me. Just another face in the crowd, a nameless extra in a novel. Funny, I thought you were visiting me because you wanted to pay respect to the one who taught you everything you know. Instead, you tell me I’m just one of your pawns.”
David Speck exploded with laughter.
“Same old Professor. I’d know that self-deprecating tone anywhere. I can’t believe I haven’t been to see you before now.”
Dark except for the illumination the flitting tongues of fire and the bright expressions of nostalgia gave, the room was the perfect environment for storytelling. At which both of the room’s occupants had extensive skills. As ice melted and wine temperature dropped, Winters’ cool, practiced voice took over.
“I have a story to tell. If you like it, feel free to use it. God knows I’m not going to be around too much longer.”
“Professor, take a look at yourself first before you start announcing your funeral. You’re in better shape than I am.”
“I appreciate your flattery, David, however fate is harder to persuade. Would you like to hear the story?”
“Of course.”
“Very good. It is one from my own experiences, dealing with my second-year roommate at Iowa. I was twenty years old at the time, very sure of myself, extremely naive. This must have been...1954? Yes, that’s right. My roommate was a pleasant fellow, reserved in many aspects and still mostly untarnished by college life. His name was Brew Easton, a name I remember for its odd frankness. I have since created many characters in stories I’ve written who’ve shared his name, but not his quality. He was tall, abnormally so, but that’s about the limit of what I remember of his appearance. I knew him for maybe a semester before...well, I’ll try not to get ahead of myself.
“We got on well to start out, he was the type of guy who didn’t have many friends and didn’t try very hard to acquire them, but the absence of a social life had left it’s mark on him. While we didn’t talk much, I think I was the closest thing he had to a friend, and I had no problem letting him follow me around. And for about three weeks, that’s what he did. But then, one day, he’d skipped classes to sleep. When I returned from the Library that evening, I was surprised to see him still in bed. Still, in college, that’s not really that odd. So I didn’t think anything of it.
“It was two weeks later that I began to suspect something was really wrong with my roommate. He hadn’t said a word to me since the day he’d slept; he hadn’t been to class and he hadn’t showered. I thought he was having a breakdown, a plausible explanation in any situation, but I did nothing to help him. The silence between us became uncomfortable, and at night, above him in my bunk, I often wondered how I’d feel if he jumped from our fifth floor window. It was an odd thing, at once feeling responsible to save a life and titillated at the possibility of the passing of an event such as the one I had envisioned. But no, he was not suicidal, and what I witnessed later led me to think it was something much, much worse.”
“I stood outside my room the next day, ear to the door, listening to the conversation going on inside. My philosophy class had ended early; it had started snowing unexpectedly and the professor made a few statements about the end of the world and was gone out the door, leaving everyone stunned and confused but happy to be out of class nonetheless. I’d slogged back through three inches of fluff, thinking the sudden blanket of white odd for the middle of September, and dismissing my professor’s strange exclamation; he was an old, eccentric guy, and I secretly believed that his sanity had left him long before that day. Outside my door, I’d pulled my key from my pocket and had almost plunged it into the lock when I heard voices. I recognized Brew’s, but the others...there were so many others, and none of them sounded anything like anyone I’d ever heard. So I put my books down on the plaid carpeting, and turned my head against the wood, to listen.”
Winters looked at his former pupil, looked at him and through him, into the past. His lips moved silently, mouthing words he’d only ever heard once before, from a host of mouths behind a door on the summer day in which it had snowed, impossibly snowed, white puffs polluting the air endlessly as each was replaced by another. Curious, he had thought, snow in September. Curious. That was before the voices, before he’d put his ear to the cool surface and stopped existing.
“You’ve condemned yourself, boy. Arrogant, and meddling. Had you only kept your voice in your head, not disturbed the sacred order of things by speaking our name, Fate would not so happily have plucked your string. You’ve lived with the knowledge of your penalty for a fortnight, and we’ve come to tell you there is a week left. Before you are to pay penance.”
Brew’s voice now, breaking in with such sadness and resignation it was hard to make out.
“I know...what I’ve done, and what I’m to pay...but a week? That’s hardly...the last two weeks went so fast!”
“And this next will go faster.” This voice, like the first, seemed a blend of whispers and shouts. It both pained and soothed, setting fire to the eardrum and numbing the brain.
“Then it will be over, and your time on this plane will be at an end.” Another voice, different, older.
Brew spoke again.
“An eternity to follow.” There was no more emotion in his voice, no more sadness. Just flat acceptance.
“Yes.” One voice now; every voice. “To follow where there is no light, down roads where Death has sewn his seed. Where the wicked reap it. To follow until your soul rots and takes new form in darkness. An eternity to follow, boy, is your sentence. And for calling our name, you shall serve every moment in agony.”
It was the last thing Winters, slumped against the door, recalled hearing. There was no more.
Winters remembered himself, an old man seated by the fire entertaining a guest. Speck sat with his eyes closed, apparently taking the moment of silence for meditation.
“I’m sorry, my boy. I knew I’d have trouble telling... Time has gotten away from me; it’s late, we haven’t opened the wine you’ve brought. Of course you’ll want a glass.” The older man began to rise.
“I’d much rather hear the rest of the story, if it isn’t much trouble,” David Speck said from behind closed eyes.
Winters sat back down.
“You’re right. I have to finish it, as much for me as for you. I want to make you believe, to feel how I felt, and I don’t know if I can. I’ve gotten old...don’t know if I have the strength for it.”
“You’ll do just fine.” The former jibing tones in their voices were gone, had been gone since the moment Winters had announced he had a story to tell.
Winters massaged his skull with knotted fingers, and chose his next words carefully.
“The voices I heard from my room were not from here. Not this universe. They spoke of a crime Easton had committed, and of his sentence. And at the time I didn’t understand. I put those voices out of my head, convinced myself I hadn’t been there, listening. For a week, I forgot. The snow melted quickly, leaving no evidence of its existence, and I went to class, and at night I’d stay up studying while Brew slept, and I kept my mind on normal things. Real things.
Then, a week from the day of the freak snowstorm, my Philosophy teacher failed to appear. He left seventy students in their chairs, staring idly at the door, wondering how he’d forgotten about class. After fifteen minutes we all left, scattering in all directions. Like the week before, I walked to my dorm and stood outside my door, feeling the deja vu in my bones.
I opened it to find a broken man. Easton lay on the floor, sobbing. I threw my books to my desk and stepped forward, for a moment uncertain of my duties.
‘Brew, what’s the matter? Are you all right?’ I said, and he sort of turned his head to look at me. But I don’t think he saw me, not then. I knelt, and put my hand on his back.
‘Brew,’ I said, ‘It’s all right. Everything’s all right. Tell me what the problem is.” I helped him to a sitting position and he stared at my face. And for an instant, I saw a flicker of something in his eyes. I like to think it was recognition.
‘Arthur, what’s happened?’ he asked me. ‘What’s happened to me?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.,’ I said. ‘Come up here, sit down on your bed. Tell me all about it.” I helped him to his feet, and all at once I noticed how thin he’d gotten. His skin stretched over bones, pale and translucent. For three weeks, he’d eaten next to nothing, killing himself slowly. And I’d not bothered to notice. I began to get very frightened. I was afraid of what he would say, and already the pit of my stomach was knotted with anticipation. Brew’s eyes dried, he swallowed and cleared his throat. And he began to speak to me.
‘I should start by saying goodbye,’ he said. ‘My time’s almost up, and you’ve been a good friend. I’ll miss you.’
‘I don’t understand. Where are you going?’ He looked into my eyes, and I felt the world around us spin. ‘Everywhere,’ he said.
‘Nowhere,’ he said.
“He told me a lot then, a lot of things I didn’t really understand. The most important was that he’d used words of magic to summon a higher power, and when the blue men appeared they were angry, and told Brew of the what price his actions would bring.”
David harbored a confused look.. “What had your friend summoned?”
Winters shook his head. “He couldn’t tell me what they were. But he knew, and very adamantly, that they were responsible for keeping order in the universe. Without the blue men, he told me, everything would be chaos. Complete disorder. Brew called them, that day, and their work for a moment was interrupted. An unforgivable offense, punishable by the worst damnation, even if he was only a kid who didn’t known the power of what he was dealing with.”
“Why did he call them blue men? Do you know?”
“I tried to get him to describe them, but he told me he’d forgotten what they’d looked like only a minute after he’d seen it; the only thing that stuck with him was the idea that they had been aglow with blue light. A new shade of blue, he’d insisted. One he’d never seen. Also he’d remembered its eyes. ‘Bluer than the rest,’ he said, ‘and full of a kind of suction. Like you want to move closer but you’re afraid you won’t be able to get away again.’ The blue men made him feel like a child inside, crippling his mind with fear and torturing his subconscious. The feeling lingered for hours after their appearances, and he felt it would dissipate if he slept. He told me that sometimes when he woke up he really believed it had all just been a dream. For a few seconds anyway. Then he’d remember, and go back to sleep.”
Winters sighed. For a moment, neither of the men said anything.
SNAP. David started, and looked toward the fireplace. A log had split, sending a stream of sparks up and into the flu. His heart was beating hard, adrenaline already pumping into his system. For a moment he’d been filled with panic, with the urge to flee, just get out and drive, away. Winters was speaking again.
“I’m not sure I should, but I’m going to show you something now, and when you see it I want you to keep your mouth closed. Alright? It’s been a long time, and sometimes I wonder if I’ve got it all right, but I want you to promise me you won’t ever say the words I’m about to show you. Can you do that?”
“Of course, Professor.”
Winters laughed, anxious. “It’s the words he used to call them, the tiny bit of magic he’d been given. He wrote them down for me, warning me to never speak them aloud. And I’ve not. Even though I was suspicious, because the phrase is so simple, so small, that I’d not believed they could have held such power.”
Speck tapped his knee nervously. Winters reached under his chair and pulled out a small wooden box. He opened it, delicately pushing the lid up with his thumb, and took out a yellowed index card. He held it across the gap between the two loungers and David reached and took it.
He squinted at the antique card, trying to make out the looping script which held the secret to summoning the blue men. He stared another moment, then looked up at Winters.
“And this is all? This is what got your friend in so much trouble? I mean, it’s so...small.”
David looked again. On the very center of the card was written:
“Once again I am in need
Come my servants, with all your speed.”
He handed it back to Winters, who replaced it in the box and slid it under his chair. The old man cleared his throat.
“Those words were never meant to be spoken by any man. They’re for the higher beings, beings who exist on a separate plane. It was bad luck he’d ended up with them - he told me a homeless man in rags had given it to him outside the library. They were written on a card just like the one I just showed you. And of course the temptation to taste the words, feel them roll off his tongue, it must have been too much. He said them.
“Brew spoke to me for over an hour. At some point he stopped, and asked me the time. He excused himself to the bathroom, and locked the door. At length he began speaking to me again.
‘It’s going to happen any minute now, Arthur. I don’t want you to panic. They’re coming to collect. Something may -you may not want to come in here after they take me. The price I’m meant to pay...it’s nothing good.’ I tried reasoning with him, I pleaded for him to come out, to talk to me. He told me no, he was being taken, taken so that he could follow. His voice had taken on a strange fluidity when he’d said that. ‘To follow where there is no light, down roads where Death has sewn his seed. Where the wicked reap it. To follow until my soul rots and takes new form in darkness. And for calling upon those who keep the order, I shall serve every moment in agony.’
‘Who?’ I’d yelled, standing outside the door. ‘Who are you supposed to follow?’
And just before the wet crunch that had accompanied the wave of blood from under the door, soaking my bare feet, Brew Easton had spoken.
‘Lucifer, called Light-Bringer, Angel of the Outer Plane.’”
David Speck’s eyes were sticky - he’d not shut them for a long stretch of time. He rolled them up as he blinked stinging tears from their ducts, and his grip on the steering wheel tightened. Open once again, he focused the sluggish spheres on the road. It was late; Professor Winters’ story had taken well into the early morning hours. The dashboard clock hummed an iridescent 3:13 and the little car sped through the forest. Sleep was more than an hour away; his bed in the apartment he leased was seventy miles from his former professor’s little house. Unable to find anything to fit his mood on the radio, he switched it off and drove in silence. He found himself thinking about his old professor’s story. Surely it had been made up, Arthur Winters had at one time been known for being able to invent elaborate, compelling stories on the spot - and pass them off as fact. Still, there was something about this one, something more vital than anything he’d ever heard. He’d felt as if he were actually there, with his old professor and his roommate as those otherworldly events had occurred. Also, there’d been the note card, which had certainly looked antique.
He promised himself he’d decide on the validity of what he’d heard in the morning. His brain felt sluggish, and every part of him wanted to sleep.
“Once again I am in need,” he said, slowly, testing himself. “Come my servants, with all your -” He could not speak the last word. He’d never been able to, not even as a child playing Bloody Mary in the bathroom with the lights turned out. As he had once imagined a dead woman appearing in the mirror on the thirteenth incantation of her name, teeth dripping with blood, reaching to pull him through to join her, he imagined now the shapeless and horrible beings with deep blue eyes coming to life in the seat next to him. And it was icy fear that stopped him, made him desperate to break the incantation with a different word immediately. Home. He would say home. Beads of relief trickled through the knot of fear in his stomach, and he began to feel better.
He opened his mouth.
“Speed.”
The train station was ten minutes from Jack Riggby’s house, and the only things he’d come back with were two bags and a coat he wasn’t wearing.
He wanted to walk down the tracks and cross just behind the train, but he had a feeling someone might yell at him. So he took his things to a sun-heated stone bench and waited. The other passengers either wandered into the parking lot or greeted family members and friends who had come to take them wherever they were going next. No one looked at Jack. Three Amtrak employees, all responding to some signal from the lead car, picked up their yellow stepping stools and got on.
He wondered what it would be like to work as a train jockey. Wake up one morning, take a bus to Union Station, get on a train going somewhere, ride for four or five hours, get off, get on a train headed back to Chicago. And as infuriating as the delays were for the passengers (at one point, they’d come to a coasting halt just short of the Kalamazoo stop and had started going backwards while some switches were unglued) Jack couldn’t imagine dealing with them every day, all while trying to placate every red-faced asshole demanding news. At least it was a job.
There would be no jobs for Jack this summer. He had applied to more than twenty sales positions, the kinds of positions that they’d give to just anyone, and he hadn’t heard from any. He’d only been brave enough to call back four of them, because he didn’t like the way his voice sounded on the phone. One stutter, one misspent gulp, and they would know he wasn’t cut out for retail. Nor did he want to be. His Linguistics degree, his green cap and gown, were useless here. Telling himself he was just another victim of the economy, that he just had to get out of Michigan, didn’t make him feel any less inconsequential.
Another minute and the train had whistled away, bells and red lights clogging traffic across the road adjoining the station parking lot. However long he’d had to wait, anyone driving back into East Lansing would have to wait longer.
As he stepped across the tracks and looked back West, toward Chicago, he thought about his mother.
She’d called him three days ago with a hitch in her voice. “I’m having surgery tomorrow morning. On my neck. They have to replace one of my discs to release a pinched nerve, and then fuse my two vertebrae together.”
He’d been riding his bike, but he had to stop and get off so he could think.
“They go in through the front,” she said, “and push my esophogas and windpipes to the side, so they can get back to where my spine is.”
They go in through the front. He shuddered. If the surgeon slipped, if it was different in there than he’d thought…
But the surgery had gone well. The next day Jack surprised her with a vase of flowers and a kiss on the cheek. The train from Lansing only took four hours, and he’d found a cheap ticket. Now he was back.
Across the road from the train station was the grocery store where he’d parked his bike, a Schwinn Varsity racer from the 80’s that he’d bought from an Asian kid for seventy dollars. He settled the duffel bag across the crotchbar and got on, balancing it gingerly until he got up to speed.
Three minutes later, he was home. The house was a modest white two-story box, reminiscent of the modular housing kick of the fifties. The neighborhood was nice too, like something straight out of the picket fence era, except none of the residents on these streets spoke English. One of the neighbors had, instead of a trim and tidy lawn, an impressively groomed parcel of dirt.
There were two cars in the driveway - his and Marcy’s. He liked Marcy, more than he wanted to, because she was obnoxious in an obvious way. She liked to brag about the things she cleaned, would get in a mood and paint random furniture and childlike pictures on canvasboard while complaining about the latest boy who had loved and left her. Toward Jack she was either warmly engaging or convincingly suspicious - a change in climate that always kept him off balance. Mostly she pricked him with loud comments about his wardrobe or hairstyle and he did his best to riposte, pretending it was a game between them. But he never knew for sure, and he supposed that was where the attraction came from.
In any case, Branson was in Ann Arbor babysitting his brother’s kids, Jessica was in Europe with her boyfriend, and Erin had just moved out. It would be him and Marcy until his lease ended and he moved to Chicago for good.
So as he locked his bike up and carried his bags up to the door, he was both excited and wary. He would take his things to his basement room, and if he heard her in the kitchen he might come up and try his luck at small talk. If that didn’t happen, well. He was all right with that too - he was in the midst of a hardcover anthology of short stories, which were perfect for his ever-waning attention span.
His room was a cement square in one corner of the basement, a cubicle with a door. It was always cool during the summer, and the sunken windows let in just the right amount of light. They let in some other things, too. Rain, if he left them open. Stray cats. Frogs. One of the cats, a brown and white tom, had become Jack’s friend. One day, after a long afternoon bike ride, he’d found it sitting on the chair in front of his computer. He’d taken it upstairs and asked Marcy and Branson if they knew where it had come from, but neither had seen it before. Jack let it out the front door and by the time he got back to his room it was sitting on his chair again. He’d laughed.
Since then, it seemed they’d established a routine. A meow at the window would wake him sometime around 3 in the morning, after which he’d let the thing in, feed it some dried cereal, let it snuggle with him for a few minutes, and put it back outside. He’d never liked cats, but for some reason this one didn’t rub him wrong. He named it Spaghettio.
Only ten minutes after he’d carried his bags inside he heard Marcy in the kitchen. He gave himself a cursory look in the mirror and walked to the bottom of the stairwell. He was about to go up, but saw she was standing there, at the top. Looking at him.
“You’re back.”
He nodded.
“Do you have time to do me a favor?” Did he have time? It supposed something about his schedule: that he had one. He had so much time he wasn’t even going to ask what the favor was.
“Sure.”
“I need you to come smoke with me. I hate doing it alone, it makes me feel. Like a stoner.”
“I can do that.” This was new. It was the first Marcy had wanted to do, well, anything with him alone, even if this time it happened to be drugs. A good sign. Right?
In her room she produced a Ziploc bag containing a ball of dried marijuana. She picked it apart meticulously, and packed the pieces into the bowl of a glass pipe.
“I don’t get high,” Jack said.
Marcy stopped what she was doing and looked at him.
“But you said you’d smoke with me.”
“Oh, no. That’s not what I meant. I’ll smoke with you. It’s just never gotten me high. I’m immune.”
She grinned. “You’ll get high. This is potent weed.”
“Someone says that every time.”
He lit the bowl and let the smoke gather in his lungs. He let it out. Over the course of the next half hour he would do the same thing more than twenty times. And contrary to his conviction, the drug did its work on him.
“I told you it was potent. It’s a new plant - a hybrid of marijuana and peyote. A cactus weed.”
He stared at her in horror until she busted up laughing. In his mind, he’d been preparing himself for a vision quest. What would it be? Would he have an animal guide? But there was no peyote in the pot and now she was trying to get him to play video games.
“I don’t know if I can,” he argued, and then explained that he felt like he was already a character in a video game being played by someone in a different plane of reality.
“It’s like I’m a glove, and someone’s hand is wearing me. Only it’s not a perfect fit. Like the fingers are too thin. So I can’t play video games while I feel like I’m in one. It’s too…recursive.”
She laughed, and then he realized what he was saying. He laughed too. Before long the bowl was out. Marcy told him she was going to bed, that she had to be up for her summer statistics class in the morning.
He went back to his room in rough shape, nearly tumbling down the wooden staircase and coming to a sprawl on the concrete. But he caught himself, giggling, and somehow made it down and into his bed, where the dark spun around him. The basement was muggy, air stagnant and full of moisture. He gagged on his breath.
The windows weren’t open, and there were two of them, one in each corner furthest from the door. They were just below ground level, sitting in little wells cut from the soil. Jack wanted to open them, kept picturing himself rising to do the job, but his body wouldn’t let him. Wait, it told him. Just wait a few more minutes.
A few more minutes and the voice in his head sounded like a cat outside his window. Spaghettio was out there. Jack pulled himself upright and went to the window, feeling like he was on stilts. He pushed the window open and the cat launched itself at him, landing awkwardly on his shoulder. Jack staggered back, but managed the pull the animal off him before it knocked him over. It ran under his bed.
“Why are you acting all crazy, kid?”
The cat didn’t answer, and didn’t come out. Jack shrugged, and then pulled the window shut. He didn’t trust himself to walk back to bed, so he took two running steps and jumped. Spaghettio yowled from somewhere and Jack held on to the bed’s sides, aware that the way everything was spinning he might get thrown off at any moment.
Some time went by.
There came the sound of rushing water, and roaring winds. Had he fallen asleep? The dark still spun, but now it was punctuated by white stabs that punctured his eyelids and thunder that ripped into his head. The thunder was odd, both distant and immediate, and it shook the house for ten seconds at a go.
The wells would be filling now, his windows would be half underwater, and he was glad he’d let Spaghettio in when he had. Was glad the windows were shut again, despite the nauseating thickness of the air. He pushed himself from the bed and knelt on the concrete.
He vomited in rhythm with the rocking of the house. It sounded like a bomb was going off, felt like a shockwave was rolling through him. Jack was covered in sweat when he finished, so he peeled off his clothes and crawled back in bed. A sudden chill took over him, but at least he felt better.
The storm seemed to be slackening.
The door at the top of the stairs opened. Her quick steps startled him, and then she was in his room. Even in the dark he could tell from her stance that she had been crying.
“I had a bad dream.”
All he knew was that he had to react.
“Oh, oh.”
He got up, and went to the closet before attempting to console her. He threw a towel on the puke so that she wouldn’t see, and went to her.
“Are you all right?”
She shook her head. “I can’t go back to sleep. And the storm…I dreamed something really bad happened to my sister’s little boy. I can’t talk about it.”
He wrapped her in his arms, and she didn’t resist.
“Here, come over here. I can’t stand very well.”
He led her to the bed and feel to his knees beside it, holding his head. She stood there for a moment, and then knelt down by him.
“Did you…it smells like vomit in here.”
“The cat did it.”
“The cat?”
“Under the bed.”
As if to prove Jack right, Spaghettio made a deep purring noise that was nearly a growl.
“Oh.”
She put her hands on his forearms and pulled them gently upward. He pushed himself off the ground, and they both sat on the bed.
“I know you’re the one with the bad dream, and I don’t know how you feel about me, but - would you lay with me?”
Marcy nodded in the dark and Jack let himself go limp in her arms. It felt good, being this close. He shivered against her warmth.
“Oh, Jack. You’re sweating, but you’re like ice. You must have a fever. Here. Lay down, I’ll get you some water.”
“No. No water. Just…lay with me.”
She did. And Jack didn’t know how long he was able to enjoy it, because it was only another few moments before he was out again.
He dreamed he was with her on the side of some Western mountain. Wyoming, or Nevada. They climbed without urgency, without fatigue. She was in front, and he watched her lithe body move - she was an elk, he was a goat. Every so often she looked back and smiled at him, and he shivered. Finally they reached the top. Marcy took off her pack, and then each piece of clothing she had, one by one. Jack stood there, unable to move, unable to look away. She was nude, all her body smooth and hairless but for her head. She came to him.
“It may seem terrible, but everything will be all right. It’s time for change, and you know that.”
“What do you mean?”
She pointed behind her, to the horizon. In front of it was a rocky steppe that came to an abrupt end. Marcy turned away from him and started to run toward it. Jack wanted to cry out, to stop her, but couldn’t. He got his legs working, and ran after. He caught up to her just as they came to the cliff’s edge, and then they were falling.
“Kiss me,” she said, and Jack woke up.
Marcy’s face was less than ten inches from his. She had turned toward him in her sleep, and her head was tilted back like she was about to tell him a secret. Her face was pale and freckled in the dim light from the waterlogged windows, and her lips were pulled forward in a pout that made them look like soft pink pillows.
He leaned toward her, unaware that he was doing it, unable to bring anything to his mind but the dream of falling. The girl in his bed who had so often annoyed him in her loud way, jousted with him over unwashed dishes and dirty bathtubs, looked peaceful here. A still life.
Jack kissed her.
Her mouth responded before her eyes ever fluttered open, kissing him back for twenty or so seconds until she came awake and saw what he’d done. She pulled back, but only, it seemed, to see him better, because he saw in her eyes not anger or bewilderment but a sort of appraisal. Then, apparently satisfied with whatever she’d gleaned, she came back to him. Her lips met his again, and parted, and his tongue danced into her mouth.
It ended with a meow. The cat had come out from under Jack’s bed and was sitting near the door, looking at them.
“Is that that cat?”
It was. “I named it Spaghettio,” Jack said, “It hangs out in here sometimes.”
Marcy rolled over and pushed herself out of bed.
“It wants to go upstairs,” she said. Jack felt her absence already. He was cold. Marcy opened the door and the cat shot through the opening. She followed, but just before her head was out of sight she looked back at him and gave him a guilty smile.
“I think I’ll come back after I pee.”
Jack put his face in his pillow, and frowned. What would this mean? He’d never been attracted to anyone he lived with before, had certainly never made out with one. And when she came back - what would she expect? Would they kiss again? Would she want more? He didn’t know if he was ready for all that - he had just wanted to kiss her, and it had been such an innocent thing to begin with.
As it turned out, he needn’t have worried. Not about impending sex, or the job market, or the failing economy. Because when Marcy came back down it wasn’t to crawl into bed with him again, but to whisper with wide eyes about the orange sky and the black snow.
He walked outside with her in his boxers and held her hand because he could tell she was scared. The air smelled bitter, and the breaths he took were battery acid on his tongue. A cough collected in the back of his throat, but when he tried to expel it all he could manage was a weak sort of wheeze. He went back in for handtowels and wet them with toilet water because there was no electricity.
They put the towels over their faces and began to walk, marvelling at the damage. The ground was covered in more than three inches of ash, and each step they took stamped a perfect shoeprint in its canvas. One small step. Footprints on a hapless moon, he thought.
It was perhaps ten or eleven in the morning but the sky was still dark, and tinted a bloody orange like that which immediately followed sunset.
They didn’t talk about what must have happened until they’d walked a quarter of a mile up the road, to Michigan Avenue. They didn’t comment on the streets filled with empty cars, or the smoking men who staggered from the west like zombies. Amid the screaming and sirens, they communicated with hand squeezes and wide eyes.
Finally his mind accepted what he had known all along - they came to the intersection of Harrison and Michigan Avenue, scarcely recognizable under all of the ash that still fell, and looked downtown, toward the ever-visible Capitol Building.
It was gone. In its place was a tower miles high, feeding black ash into the clouds. What might once have looked like a mushroom cloud. Someone nuked the Capitol, Jack thought. And considering they were still almost four miles away, it had to have been a heavy hitter.
He tried not to think about his mother in Chicago, tried not to imagine a country where every major city had been blown to kingdom come. He cleared his throat.
“Must have been a hell of a storm,” he said.
Marcy looked at him. “What do we do now?”
“I don’t know. We could go home.”
She shook her head, and looked back downtown.
“I want to see where it all went. Where it all came from.”
She shook her hand loose from his and stepped forward. Marcy, his roommate, the girl he’d kissed for the first time one morning after a storm, didn’t look back.
Jack stood in the road wearing a pair of boxers and a wet towel over his face. His skin felt warm, like he’d been doing early afternoon yardwork under a summer sun. The ash that fell on him tickled and stung, and the screams and sirens kept on as if they’d always been there.
He watched her for near a minute, her lithe body moving toward the bomb. She was an elk. He was a goat.
He got his legs working.
The important thing was that I knew him - a lanky boy with greasy hair and bad acne. I put his books (calculus, general computing, and advanced programming) into a bag and cleared my throat.
”$164.85”
He sighed. “You know, Steven, I don’t even need these books.”
I nodded. “Of course not.”
He pulled a card from the satchel strapped to his waist - a tassled black leather fanny pack that hung all the way past the crotch of his jeans.
“I could have written these books, Steven. Heck, I could have written books that would have taught the writers of these books to write them better than they’re written.”
I nodded and scanned the card. It beeped, and began the authorization process.
”Debit or credit?”
”Sheesh, you know I have like zero funds - credit.”
The credit card slip printed. I pushed it across to him, along with a pen. I knew he wouldn’t have a pen.
”Thanks. You know, I think I’m almost there, Steven. I’m almost ready for the title.”
He pushed the slip back - there, on the signature line, was what looked like a drop of ink that had been smeared across with a fingertip. I watched him put my pen in his fanny pack. He licked his lips. I decided to humor him.
”The title, huh? What do you think it’s going to be?”
I threw his receipt in the bag and pushed the whole thing across the counter. He scooped it up and gave me a look before he began to walk away.
“I’ve explained this to you before, Stephen. There’s no point in wondering what it’s going to be - she’ll tell us when she knows. And I think she’s going to be ready for her title performance very soon...I can almost feel it.”
At that point he was around the counter and throwing open the door, sucking the flakes of snow that had been swirling just outside into the store and sending them into kamikaze dives toward the muddy carpet, melting as they went.
”I’ll see you at home, Stephen. When do you get off work?”
”Seven. Later Owen.”
And he was gone. I turned to the next girl in line. She gave me a peculiar smile.
”You live with Owen Sinclair? Wow. Is he really a genius like they say? My sister had a class with him and she said he basically ended up teaching it, and the TA just sat there with his mouth open the whole time. Why did he get those books if he didn’t need them?”
”He’s...really big on adhering to the required course material. And yeah, he’s smart. Did you want all of those?”
She ignored me, and stared out into the blustery cold beyond the plate glass windows.
”I wonder if he has a girlfriend.”
I pulled the books from her arms and started scanning. I tried not to clench my teeth.
”Of course he does. And besides, you wouldn’t be a good match for him.”
“No?”
“Not enough circuitry.”
I was going to be a novelist. That’s what I told myself then. That’s how I justified working at a university bookstore a full two years after I’d graduated from the same university. I told myself that when the time was right, when it was meant to be, I’d write my novel. And then, I’d sell it. I’d live off the royalties for the rest of my life, doing whatever I felt like. Heck, maybe I’d even write another one if I got bored of that.
I was a stupid kid. I spent all this money on writing books, magazines, and every piece of software that came out promising to help me write the thing, or to effectively write it without my having to do any real work. I told myself I was going to be a novelist. And I believed it. That’s why, the summer before Owen Sinclair and I got an apartment together, I told him my plan.
It was a party he didn’t belong at. Heck, I don’t know if I belonged there, but I was closer to the type who did. It was a forty-hands night, the type of thing that had everyone in attendance floundering up and down stairs and through hallways, giant brown bottles duct-taped to each hand. The rule was you couldn’t pee or free your hands until you finished both, and you couldn’t do that too fast unless you wanted to puke. The purpose of the party, apropo of nothing, was to drink.
I was halfway through my second forty, sitting in the basement near a girl I was trying to impress - she wasn’t interested, but I didn’t care. “I write books. I’m going to be famous.” The truth was apparent - I was drunk and would do no writing, and would do no being famous either. She knew it, and I think when she got up to leave I knew it too. Plans don’t matter to anyone until they’re no longer plans.
I stared at the ends of my arms for a few minutes, at the two glass apertures that had replaced my hands. I took a long drink of the second bottle, and belched. When I looked up again there was a boy sitting where the girl had been.
“I’m Owen Sinclair.” I stared. His bottles were, from where I sat, full.
”I was sitting over there listening to you talk to that girl. Are you really writing a novel?”
My mouth was dry, my tongue was numb. I squeezed my bottles with every bit of strength in my fingers.
”I’m writing the best novel anyone will have ever read.”
He clicked his bottle tops together and leaned forward, interested.
”Really?”
“Sure, why not? Why the hell do you care?”
“Let’s say I help you do it.”
”You? What can you do? Babysit me? Tell me everything I’m writing needs to be rewritten? Jesus, man. No one can write it but me.”
The alcohol was beginning to take hold. His shoes were extremely large. Velcro shoes - I hadn’t seen those since middle school.
“Listen, man. It’s all real simple. You see, a hundred million books have been written so far by humanity, maybe ten or twenty thousand of those were any good. Now, what if I could...”
That was the first night I heard it. Owen’s idea. And it might not have made much sense then, seeing how I was. But after hearing it again, and again (the idea was always the topic of our conversations after that, after I remembered I’d seen Owen Sinclair in the newspaper for doing some really groundbreaking work with computers) it began to make a majestic sort of sense. Whatever he’d done before, whatever computer thing he’d done had apparently been big; big enough for the university to award him a five-hundred-thousand dollar grant to work on his next project.
And his next project was Sally.
Sally lived in the basement.
He was waiting for me when I got home, standing in the doorway with the biggest grin I’d ever seen him wear. I couldn’t help it; I had to laugh. The two six packs of beer (MGD for me, PBR for him) clinked together in the bag I cradled, giving away my surprise.
”Here,” I said, putting the bag down and pulling the Blue Ribbon out, “To celebrate.”
The grin quickly soured.
”Steven, you shouldn’t talk about celebrating. It’s bad luck to do it beforehand.” He didn’t, however, take his eyes off the beer.
”Suit yourself,” I said, “Not like you really have to thank me, that stuff is cheaper than water.” Owen looked around, as if suddenly unaware of what he was doing. He recovered, and the grin showed up again.
”Steven. She’s ready.”
”Yeah? Let’s go fire her up.” I’d already popped the cap off of one of my beers and taken a pull. Steven didn’t notice - he was bounding down the stairs like a little kid.
”Come on! Look, she’s all set. All we have to do is hit this button.”
“Mmm...” I grabbed another beer and started down the stairs. “Congratulations, Sally. Tonight is the night.”
It wasn’t. Three hours later, my beer was gone and Sally was still humming her low, scratchy tune. Owen was sitting next to me, head in his hands.
”So...how do we know it’s working?”
He sighed, as if I hadn’t already asked the same question multiple times.
“We know, Steven, because she’s awake. She’s not idling, and she’s not errored. If that had happened, she would have printed an error message.”
“What if the error message was really the title? How would you know?” I tried not to laugh, but it was hard. I was far from sober, and felt like funning with the guy a little. He always assumed I was serious, even if my questions were, in actuality, ridiculous. That’s one of the things I enjoyed about Owen, and I took advantage of it often.
”Really, Steven! Would the greatest title in the world really be “Error Message”? Besides, I’ve already thought of that. If there’s an error, the error message will print the three safe words I’ve chosen beforehand. So I’ll always know what the output means.”
“What are the safe words?”
”What? Oh....Sandwich and jelly and something else. I don’t remember. I’ll know if I see it.”
”Peanut butter?”
“No, Steven, that’s not it! How is that even one word?!” Frustrated, Owen stood up and puffed his chest out, taking a deep breath. “She’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. I’m going to bed.”
With that, he pounded back up the stairs.
”Night, O.”
Johanna Rivers never thought her dying Sunfire would get her to the hotel. The engine had been smoking for the last three miles, and the surety that she would be stranded here, in the middle of a large harvested cornfield, had started to sink in. She had slowed down to twenty miles per hour and was now just hoping that her car would hold out a bit longer. That was when the motel became visible over the last small hill leading into a distant intangible town. The motel, however, was in reach. She turned into the lot and her car puttered into the first parking space. Then the engine died. Johanna stepped out of the car with thoughts of possible car repair as a warm tropical breeze assaulted and tousled her hair, playing aggressively like a little boy with someone to wrestle with. The breeze was out of place; it was November, and she was smack dab in the center of Iowa, in a town called Clear Lake. She’d seen the ‘Now Entering’ sign some five miles back and had wondered just where the little town was. Now that she could see it on the horizon, however, she recognized it. Just one more version of good old Middle of Nowhere, USA. She’d seen more than she cared to. There had been plenty of them in Arkansas, Rogers’s and Springdale’s and Clinton’s being the truck stop capitols of the world. And she’d been to each and every one of them. She’d been traveling north for over two weeks, stopping every now and then to work a small job so she could get the gas money to continue. She was closer to her goal now than ever before, but she figured she was still a few hours from it.
Johanna wore a coat she’d paid for at a Salvation Army for four dollars. It was in fair condition, and she’d been surprised at its cheapness. A pair of cargo Dockers covered her legs; she’d found these hanging out of a trashcan in Worthington. With the car broken down, however, the current delay would cost her a few more days; possibly a week or more. She only had a hundred dollars in her wallet, and she doubted that a small-town gadgetry man would charge her any less. She would get a room at the hotel and then move on, looking for a job in town somewhere. Johanna pushed on the glass door and it opened hard, hinges dirty and lacking grease. The man behind the counter was sleeping, and he reeked of normality. He wore a sweat-stained white tee and a pair of old tennis shorts. Johanna cleared her throat.
“Ahem. Uh, mister?” She asked, her voice barely louder than the buzz of the clock on the wall. The man snored on, his dreams taking precedence over his job.
“Mister? I want a room.” When the man still didn’t wake up, Johanna laughed a little. Her timidity was surprising. She’d traveled over a thousand miles and was still too scared to wake a sleeping man. On the counter of the reception area was a stack of brochures. ‘Welcome To The Silver Boot’ it proclaimed loudly on the front. Johanna took one and put it in her coat. Next to the stack of brochures was a tarnished and well-worn bell. The paper taped to the counter in front of the bell read ‘Ring bell for ser-’ It was ripped diagonally down the last line and the rest of the paper was stained with a various assortment of candies, drinks, and greases. Johanna hit the bell.
It had been a slow day at the motel, and Shane, the manager, had only had to check in one customer in the morning. It didn’t surprise him. Not many people sidled into this corner of the state (not that it really was a corner, he just liked the saying), and when they did, they didn’t stay long. Mostly drifters and people who had car trouble, not too many that fit into the ‘miscellaneous’ category. For the 26 years Shane had been managing The Silver Boot, not one person he’d seen on TV or at the movies had walked through the plate glass door. Not as if he blamed them, The Silver Boot was hardly a five star hotel (heck, he’d be lucky if it was a one), but still. One expects a bit of luck now and then.
Shane had dozed off around three; he did it often when the going was slow. He was having a particularly good dream about a casino when the service bell rang.
“Hello?” Shane snorted, still most of the way asleep. He blinked several times, and his eyes tried to focus in on the figure in front of the counter.
“Yes, hello. My car broke down, and I’m going to need a room for the night. Or maybe the week. I haven’t quite figured out the timing just yet.” The lady, for it was a lady, let go of a nervous little tittering laugh. Shane squinted at the lady for a second, watching her mouth move. She was a pretty lady, prettier than most he’d seen in the last few months, and she spoke with an accent that was clearly southern. He saw that her clothes were a bit dirty; they would need a good wash. The woman’s hair was filthy, as if she’d rubbed it in a pile of mud, let it dry, then tried brush it out with a hairbrush. He stared at it for a few seconds before realizing he hadn’t spoken yet. It was his turn to clear his throat.
“I…uh…you…you wanted a room?” He must have sounded absolutely idiotic, but the woman took it in stride.
“Your cheapest one, please. All I have is a hundred dollars and I would like to make it last.” She looked at him complacently as if she had all the time in the world, and he found it hard to speak again. Her eyes caught and held his, they were a deep sort of hazel that seemed to get deeper the longer he looked.
“Oh yes, of course. The cheapest one. That’ll be room 19, the last one in the row.” He fumbled for a key in the drawer and handed it to her. She took it hesitantly.
“And how much is it?” She looked scared, as if her time might be cut short by the expensiveness of the room.
“Uh…hundred a week. If you can swing it.” The actual price for the room was thirty a night, but this was a special case. Why it was a special case he didn’t know, and he didn’t care. If he was Jewish, he could call it a mitzvah, but he guessed a good deed was good enough for a middle-aged protestant. No, how about Good Samaritan. Yes, that would fit the bill quite nicely.
“Should I pay now or later? Tell you what, I’ll pay you fifty now, and fifty after I’m done with the room. That way you don’t have to worry about me just taking off.” The lady looked relieved, and the taught, worried look in her face had melted. Shane grinned.
“That sounds good. But I’ll be watching you.” He didn’t really care, however. If he never got the extra fifty, he wouldn’t care. There was a woman, a beautiful woman that was staying at his motel; never mind if she was dirty. Mayhap she liked him. Boy oh boy maybe she did. Shane hadn’t had a girlfriend in so long…
“Can I get some ID ma’am? Like a driver’s license? It’s only so I can--”
“Sure.” The lady started digging through her purse for her wallet. God, she was so beautiful. He just wanted to reach out and touch her, to see if she was real. Part of him said that she couldn’t be real; that he was still having a dream, a really good dream. The lady found her license and slid it across the counter along with a fifty-dollar bill with a graceful and yet hurried motion. She was becoming restless. Johanna Rivers, the driver’s license said. And the picture did no justice to the woman, despite her raggedy clothes and silty hair.
“Well, Ms. Rivers, have a nice stay. I’m sure you’ll like it here. There’s lots to do in Clear Lake. And over in Mason City, about three miles east, there’s a cosmetics college. LaJames.” This warranted Shane a confused look. “It’s all we’re really known for around here, Ms. Rivers.”
“Oh. Well, I believe I shall go and place my things in my room. Thank you for your hospitality, Mr…”
“Williams, ma’am, Shane Williams. And if you need anything, anything at all, just give me a ring. I’m number one on the speed dial.” Shane said, his calm returning to him. Who was he kidding? He was in his fifties. And this, this angel looked as though she could be in her twenties. Maybe even thirties, but more likely she was in her late twenties. Johanna gave him a big smile, and turned around. When she reached the door she looked back.
“I may have to take you up on that, Mr. Williams.” She stepped out the door and into the warm fall day.
“It’s Shane! Call me Shane!” He called after her. She paused for a moment.
“Indeed.” And she was out the door, walking briskly toward down the row of apartments.
<^>^<^>^<^>^<^>^<^>^<^>^<^>^<^>^<^>^<^>^<^>
When Johanna reached room number 18, she felt something different. She couldn’t tell if it was in the air or what, but it was upsetting her stomach. It was like the taste of iron you got when you ate a particularly rich egg-yolk. Only this was wrong. The feeling was wrong and she wanted it to go away. She stepped back a few paces and the feeling disappeared. A perplexed look appeared on her face, and disappeared just as fast.
“No matter.” She took the room key out of her pocket and walked toward the dark green door. She went fast, as if she had heard footsteps behind her. She turned the key in the door and shouldered her way through, hitting the lights.
The room was pleasant enough, but the strange feeling was worse. That feeling like when you bit on tin foil; that feeling was clenching Johanna’s stomach. There were two queen-sized beds that sat on a plush beige carpet. The bathroom was clean enough, and the sink was polished and shiny. Johanna set down her purse and tried to sit on one of the beds, even venturing as far as to take one of her shoes off.
Then she heard a low moan. The feeling in her stomach tripled in strength, and Johanna doubled over. She was going to vomit. There was another moan, and it sounded as if it was coming from under her bed. She had a quick thought of an old horror movie, where the pretty girl investigates a small noise and ends up decapitated. Without even bothering to put her shoe back on, Johanna tripped out of the room and started running back to the lobby.
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Here she was again, that crazy beautiful lady. She was running with one shoe off and a mighty big grin on her face. An insane grin. Shane got up out of his chair and bolted out to the door. Johanna was panting, her mouth quivering in such a way that no coherent sentence could escape it. She collapsed onto the ground, knees thudding dully on the parking lot pavement.
“Shane oh Shane oh God there’s…a moaning some sort of voice you have to…. oh God my stomach was so…but now it’s better oh Shane you have to go…I think it was a man…” At this she began to shudder, tears welling out at the corners of her eyes, teeth chattering with an intensity rivaled by any child who has fallen through thin ice. She pointed at the open door of her room. As if by magic, a thin naked man teetered out of the door. He looked both ways and proceeded to run, in a slow, loping way. Shane was reminded of the hoaxed video of Bigfoot, running in long, careful strides with his shoulders hunched. The naked man moaned, louder and lower than before. Johanna shuddered, and her stomach clenched. Shane left her side and took off.
“Hey! Hey mister! Stop right there!” Shane might be old, but his legs still had some chase left in them. The naked man was heading straight for the road, stumbling on his own feet every few strides. His arms were thin, and he had a skeletal quality that made him a miracle to watch. Shane picked up his pace. There were cars coming down the road, and while he didn’t want to have to tackle this brittle man, he wanted him out in traffic even less.
“Stop! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He was closing in on the man, and still he seemed not to hear Shane. The road loomed ever closer, and there were a line of cars coming into town from the east. The man was going to kill himself. Shane saw it, and had to stop it. He got ready to tackle the man, though his lungs had finally started to feel the ache of oxygen loss.
Then something happened that neither Shane nor the watching Johanna could have predicted. Ten yards from the road the skeleton man collapsed, his thin frame crashing against the ground. Shane saw his head bounce off the pavement like an overused bouncy ball, and blood began to gush from it. The man was facedown, and unmoving. Got to be dead. Got to be, Shane thought. He knew he would have to check, though. A feeling of unease began to sink into his guts, and they squirmed like a child caught in a trap. Perhaps it was a bit more than just unease. He moved forward and poked the man. He didn’t move. So Shane flipped him over.
The naked man had no eyes. All that remained were two bloody sockets, the optical cords rotting and hanging out of his head. The man’s chest didn’t move as with breath, but he was alive, just the same. Shane knew he was. Living but mental, who cares s’long as they pay the rental. Johanna crept up behind Shane, wanting to see what had happened. So this had been the man under her bed. Then she saw his eyes and she grabbed at her belly. She struggled not to gag. Then the man’s mouth opened.
“I saw them. I saw them looking at me and they punished me for it.” The man spoke with a deep Irish accent, but still his chest wouldn’t move. Shane looked at him incredulously, and couldn’t think of a way to ask the obvious question without puking. He didn’t need to.
“I call them the blue men. They are in charge of the order of things; they keep things where you put them. But sometimes, sometimes they mess up.” The man was whispering now, his breath fading. Shane couldn’t see how he had any breath to begin with. Passing cars were honking but he paid them no mind. He bent closer to the skeleton man.
“Sometimes you put something down and it gets moved. I thought…I thought it was because there weren’t enough of them to keep track of it…I thought I could control them…oh God they’ve damned me. No, dammit, it wasn’t because there weren’t enough of them. It was because there were too many. And I was a damned fool. Am a damned fool.” He uttered a small laugh and his chest heaved. His mouth widened and he turned it into a grin.
“Yes, Death, come. I’ve done my duuuttttyyyyy… ” He hissed, death reaching down his throat as his last breath escaped it. Shane sat there for a moment, the clenching gut sickness gone.
“Is he…is he dead?” Johanna asked, her face contorted in a string of emotions, her mind confused over which one to pick.
“Dead. Yeah, he’s dead.” Shane got up to approach Johanna and hold her, but she had fainted.
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A parade of cops and paramedics arrived around 4:30. A crowd had gathered around the naked man, most of them from the motel but others from houses down the road. News travels fast in small towns, dontcha know. Whispers passed between people in the crowd, questions and answers. Only two were silent: a 52-year-old motel manager and a dirt-ridden beauty whose journey north had just taken quite a change of direction.
“How did he die?” one voice in the crowd asked.
“Dunno,” said another.
“He tripped. I was watching out my window,” another voiced, this one clearly a patron of the motel.
“God, he’s thin. Looks like a picture from the Holocaust.”
“Yeah. Look at his arms. They’re naught but bone. Skin and bone.”
“Wonder where he was from. Where he was going to…”
“What do you thin happened to his eyes?”
“Jesus, or his clothes. And what was he doing in that lady’s room?”
A wash of voices poured over Shane, but he only heard one that mattered, and it was a memory. I call them the blue men. I saw them looking at me and they punished me for it. I thought I could control them. They’ve damned me. Damned me. And of course, the final, most poignant thing the naked man had said. Yes, Death, come. I’ve done my duty. What had been his duty? Shane wondered what it would be like to be damned, unable to die in any way that was humane. Lack of food merely thinning you, but never starving you, cold freezing your organs but never stopping your life, never stopping your damned life.
A burly cop pushed through the crowd. Shane looked up. The cop, an Officer Canfield by the nametag, was asking the crowd who had called this incident in. Some of the people pointed at Shane, some at Johanna. The police officer addressed them both.
“Okay, you two. We’re going to go over here so we can talk. Come on. I’ll have officer Linden secure the scene.” When neither Shane nor Johanna moved, he took them by the arms.
“I just want to ask you a few questions.” They relented and were led out of the circle. Shane peeked up at the sky. It had grown dark. Clouds had formed and it was threatening to rain.
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Robert couldn’t find his wallet. He remembered putting it on his bed when he came home from work the night before, but it wasn’t there. He had checked under his bed, and all around it, but he couldn’t seem to find it. Great. Just great. Now he was going to be late for work. Just one more thing for his boss to have against him. Maybe he would call in sick. No, too risky. I could just go, he thought. Just drive there without it. But his driver’s license was in his wallet, and if he got pulled over… He looked at his watch. 5:42 P.M. God, his shift was starting in fifteen minutes. He checked under his bed again before uttering a sigh of frustration. He ran to grab his coat; it was raining outside. A few minutes ago it had been nice, but now it was raining. He picked up his keys and shrugged on his shoes.
As he turned the key in the ignition, a thought scrambled through his head; if you leave late, expect to arrive late. He couldn’t remember where he’d heard it before. Well screw that. He couldn’t be late. Robert backed out of the driveway with all the zeal of a determined drag-racer. He was going to be on time if it was the last thing he did.
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Officer Canfield asked many more questions than Johanna thought he was going to. Officer Linden, a short, tough looking woman, had rolled the body bag on the stretcher into the ambulance twenty minutes ago; now she was gone and the crowd had disappeared. Shane, Johanna, and the chubby police officer with the thick mustache were the only ones left, and Johanna felt like she was in a movie. Not a very well directed one, she thought. Something was out of place here. Johanna couldn’t tell if it was because she was still in shock, or that it was finally raining, or if it had to do how she had been so close to her goal and now she was stuck.
The officer had first asked for a description of what had happened from (where else) the beginning. Johanna told him about how she’d gone into her room and heard strange noises from under her bed. Instead of investigating them, however, she’d run to the lobby to get Shane. That was when the naked man had emerged and begun running towards the road.
“And you said you thought he was trying to commit suicide, is that correct?” The officer asked. He was writing on a small notepad.
“Well, no. I didn’t know what he was going to do. It was Shane who thought the man was going to commit suicide…you know, by running into traffic like that.”
“I see. Did you notice anything peculiar about the man, besides his being naked and thin like that?” The cop had fallen into technicality, not really caring what the answers were as long as he could leave. The questioning went on for another ten minutes and then the two were left alone.
“Shane?” Johanna asked.
“Yes, Ms. Rivers?” Shane said.
“Who was in my room last?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to check the registry. I don’t think anyone’s been in there in months.”
“And Shane?”
“What?”
“You can call me Johanna.”
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5:53. Robert was still over ten minutes away; his job in Clear Lake working as a bus boy at Happy Chef was still a distant dream. But he could make it. He would. All that was needed was a little extra pressure on the accelerator. Well, maybe a lot extra pressure. He was traveling down Highway 18, heading west into town. Cops this side of big Mason usually didn’t patrol the highways as thoroughly. The shoulders on either side of Robert’s rusty Alero blurred. Rain pelted down on the windshield harder every minute, and his visibility was cut in half. He checked his speedometer. It read 112 miles per hour. He pushed the pedal harder, despite the frantic attempts of the windshield wiper that just couldn’t get the water off fast enough. It was a 55 zone here; the first sign of civilization just in sight. Luckily the road was clear and the approaching motel’s parking lot was empty but for a few cars. Robert felt like he could fly; his adrenal glands were working overtime. He could get pulled over, but so what? This was the most fun he’d had in years! He had almost reached The Silver Boot motel when a strange noise made itself known. It was a low repeating thud, and Robert let off the gas. The thud went away. When he tried to resume his former speed, however, he couldn’t. The car’s speed remained seventy-seven miles per hour, and wouldn’t go a hair past. He slowed down some more. When he had slowed to twenty-five miles per hour, his car still wouldn’t accelerate. So he pulled into the Silver Boot, just as Johanna Rivers had less than two hours before.
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The last person in room number 18 had been a Mr. Frank Eberhard, and he had signed in on July 17th. That was over three months ago, Shane thought. If that had been the man…surely he would have recognized his own customer, wouldn’t he? But the man had been so thin. And so old. Shane took out an old shoebox; his driver’s license copies were in there. Where was Johanna? She had gone to the bathroom over ten minutes ago. Oh well, perhaps she was cleaning her hair. Shane chuckled and opened the box. The top one was Johanna’s. He looked at it a moment before putting it aside to shuffle through the remaining ones. It was a good thing he dated the copies; otherwise he’d have to look at the names individually, one by one. And even though The Silver Boot wasn’t the busiest motel around, three months was a long time. October, September, August, July. Ah, here it was.
The driver’s license that Shane pulled out of the shoebox showed a man in his early thirties. Frank D. Eberhard, from Wisconsin. He had a brown beard and a trucker hat on in the picture. Shane looked at the photo for over a minute. He couldn’t remember if he’d checked this guy in or not. It may have been a Thursday; on Thursdays he had bowling down and the local lanes and Jake Thornton from the Piggly Wiggly would sub in and earn a few extra bucks. He was certain he had a calendar around here somewhere. Shane riffled through stacks of unorganized junk mail and unpaid bills. Where was that damned calendar? He spent two more minutes stumbling over loose debris; some of it pressing, some of it stuff that should have been thrown away years ago. Either he’d lost the thing, or he’d never had a calendar to begin with. Shane knew it was probably the former; he remembered using a calendar not too long ago. But where was it? He was going to have to call Jake. He checked his watch. Five minutes to six. He would be out of school, that’s for sure.
Shane had just started dialing Jake’s number when the bell on the door chimed. A tall man in restaurant garb pushed in.
“Hello, stranger! You look like you’re in a jam. Anything I can help you with?” Shane noticed the younger man’s eyes narrow and his lips form into a scowl. Better not get in this one’s way, he thought.
“A jam, yes. I’m in quite a jam, stranger. I just lost my job. Well, I didn’t, but I’m going to.” The man waved his hand at Shane. “You wouldn’t understand. It’s complicated.”
Shane understood that he didn’t like this fella much. Barely outta diapers and already running his mouth like he owns the ground and everything sitting on it.
“Car trouble? Late for work? Were you one strike away from the unemployment line? Trust me sir, that type of thing happens a lot around here. Now I’ll ask you again. Can I help you with anything?” Shane’s voice was cordial enough, but his eyes blazed with dislike.
The tall man paused, then for the first time took a look at the man behind the counter. He was older, shorter, beefier, and seemed to be gifted with the wit of the streetwise. The tall man saw this and took notice. He put out his hand.
“I’m Robert Greeley.”
“Shane Williams” The two men shook hands and Robert’s retreated into his pockets. He looked up at the ceiling. Shane thought he looked like a kid who’d been caught stealing. I can’t believe it, the older man thought. He’s actually going to apologize. Or at least attempt to.
“I’ve had a really shitty day,” the younger man started. He’d stopped staring at the ceiling and had resorted to looking around. What he was looking at wasn’t important, as long as he wasn’t looking at Shane. His mouth moved, as if rehearsing what to say.
“I…uh…excuse my French. Normally I’m not so rude, but I lost my wallet earlier and now I’m late for work because my car crapped out on me. I guess I came in here looking for a phone book. Do you have one? I mean, could I use your phone? I’d like to have my car looked at.” Robert was now looking at the floor.
Shane looked as if he’d just witnessed a miracle.
“Sure…I think I’ve got a phone book somewhere around--” he trailed off and bent over, digging through a pile of paper and discarded envelopes. Robert looked around, seeing the old lobby of the hotel for the first time. It was small in here, almost claustrophobic. The walls were paneled in brown, fake pine strips. Near the door sat an old puke-green colored chair; its stuffing littering the old clumpy brown carpet beneath it. The air reeked of musk and a hint of lingering cigarette smoke and old alcohol. The wall was littered with post-its and pin-ups. Almost hidden behind a deer cartoon and a reminder to check room 15 for mold was a calendar. It was open to October, and Halloween was circled. Must have had a party or something, Robert thought. It was November now, November 17th if he hadn’t been hibernating. The older man popped up again, holding a battered book. Shane? Was that his name? It seemed right, and Robert couldn’t believe he’d already forgotten.
“Here’s your book. I’ll just let you look through it; I’m going to go to the bathroom. Hope you don’t mind.” Shane skipped toward the back door. So that was where it went. To an outdoor bathroom.
The door was almost closed when Shane peeked his head in again.
“Oh, almost forgot. The phone’s over there, on the edge of the desk. Uh, it’s under some stuff.”
That was an understatement. The phone wasn’t visible, and the only reason Robert would think there was even a telephone over there was the lump that was barely visible under brochures and papers of all sorts. He just slid them back over the counter and onto the floor. Not as if it would have made any difference; the man’s floor was already swimming in more late bills and junk mail than Robert had seen in his entire life.
The phone had one of those ancient dial things where you had to turn the wheel with your finger to call the person you wanted to call. If only Robert had actually wanted to call someone. His manager, a true uptight bitch, was not someone he would enjoy explaining his problems to.
She answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Jerri? Yeah, I know I’m late but my car broke down…no I’m serious. And I’m stranded at the Silver Boot, you know that little hotel out of town a bit? Yeah well I called to tell you I wouldn’t be able to make it in today. Yes, I know my shift started five minutes ago. But I told you my car broke down. What? I’m telling the truth, I swear. Just give me another chance; it was my car, something wrong with the engine. No, Jerri, don’t. Please? I know we’ve had our differences and you’ve been looking for an excuse to—Jerri? Boss?”
The line was dead. Robert wrung his hands in a display of intense drama.
He said, “Shit.” He said, “I hate my life.” He sat down.
Johanna wasn’t in the bathroom. Shane had knocked and asked if she was okay; there was no answer. The rain gave him an unwanted cold bath as he stood outside the small restroom building. He asked again through the door if everything was all right. No answer. Fearing a faint or something worse, he had slowly opened the door. The neglected bathroom stood empty; the only thing greeting him was the constant repeating drip of the faucet. The first feelings of stupidity washed through him; he had been asking an empty bathroom if it was okay. He turned around and started back. Where was Johanna? Shane dismissed it quickly, she had probably run back to her room to change or shower or something.
When Shane walked back into the lobby the young kid was sitting in the green chair smoking.
“Hey you, put that out or get out. It already smells bad enough in here.” Shane kicked aside some papers and found the phone. For the second time that night he began to dial Jake’s phone number.
“Oh sorry, I didn’t know. Hey, want to know something funny? I called work and my boss hung up on me. Does that mean I’m fired? I bet it does.” Robert leaned over and opened the door a crack. A still-smoking cigarette butt sailed out and into a large puddle.
“Wow, it’s really raining. We’ll probably have a flood. You got a TV?”
Shane gave Robert the finger on the lips routine: Shut up I’m on the phone.
“Hi, Jake?” Shane said extra loudly; Robert had just opened his mouth again. He closed it hesitantly and continued to look around, a forced bored look filling in his face.
“No, you don’t need to come in. I just need to ask you about a man that came in here last July. Well, on second thought it would be easier if you just came in. I can’t very well show you a picture over the phone. Huh? Sure that would be fine.” Shane hung up the phone.
“Jake should be here in about ten minutes,” he said. Robert was turned toward the glass door.
“Uh…Mr. Williams? Somehow I don’t think he’s going to get here that fast.” His hand had moved to point outside, where Shane could hear a roaring.
“Shit.” Shane staggered around the side of the counter and regained his balance in front of the door, where he was motionless, mouth stuck in an expression of pure awe.
It wasn’t pouring. No, pouring was an understatement. It was a waterfall out there. Shane couldn’t even differentiate between water droplets. Johanna should see this, he thought. That was when the first grip of terror struck him.
“Robert, can you go check and see if Johanna is in her room?”
“Johanna? Who’s that?”
“Oh God. Don’t worry about it, I’ll go.” He reached for the door to the closet where his umbrella and raincoat were stored, but then reconsidered and lunged right for the door.
Shane was immediately drenched, seemingly swimming in all the water. Where was he going? He couldn’t keep his eyes open. His fifty-year-old legs were six inches deep in rainwater, the same rainwater that was struggling to push itself into his mouth.
Slowly he pushed himself toward the last room, the room he was hoping mightily that Johanna was in. By the time he arrived, the water had risen to his kneecaps. He took out his key-chain, frantically started looking for the key to open the door, and then dropped the ring of keys into the water. He reached for it, his arm wavering slightly in the icy water. His fingers had trouble closing around them; the touch of arthritis he already had worked in confluence with the temperature. But then he had it; the soft jingle of metal striking metal was barely heard under the roar of the plummeting rain.
When the door opened, a wave of water pushed the door in further as if the turning of the lock was the only thing that would save it from the pending flood. But the room was empty.
“SHIT!” Shane took a step back and turned, wheeling on his back shoe. That was when he made the mistake of trying to run. He was underwater before he knew he was falling.
He hit his elbow and his eyebrow on the hard gravel and concrete underneath, which was coming up in clumps, rising from the wet clay beneath.
He almost started to breathe but stopped himself, the tumult of wind and the pouring rain had created waves and rushing water that would waste no opportunity filling his mouth up with death.
He pushed himself up gasping for air as his face crested waves. When he stood up the flood was that his thighs. A few of the hotel rooms had their doors blown in their windows exploded and one, Number 19 the one the woman had checked into, the one that the thin man had run from, collapsed and washed away all in one swoop.
Where was she? Was she alive?
"Mr. Williams? I came out with you because honestly there's nothing safe about anything right now." Robert was behind him clutching a handle of some sort and wading his direction. His earlier cool and smug expression had turned to one of expressed concern, but concern more in the context of the current moment, A moment where Shane was feeling the equivalent of life and death panic, this boy only seem to be operating on the spectrum of this doesn't bother me to I'm quite concerned about this.
"Robert, come we have to find her."
"Who?"
"Joanna - she was just out here." she kissed me, he thought.
Louder than he would've been able to do, Robert screamed "JOANNA!!" at the top of his lungs, and through the crashing roar of the thunder and the pelting pouring rain, it still wasn't much of a thing, but Shane appreciated it. Good kid, wasn't he? Or wasn't he? Heh.
He didn't want to tell himself she was gone forever, he didn't want to tell himself that she was inside room 19 when it collapsed and washed away into the brown murk beyond the constant downpour of water. He could picture her being dashed between walls, impaled by a bed corner or carried comically it a bathtub to a quick end. Comic but for how it made him shudder. Would somebody really have put her in his life, this dirty woman, this face he slotted next to his own when he thought of "us", would somebody really have put her there just to take her away so quickly in the most egregious of ways?
"Joanna!"
It was so cold, a lot colder than he would've expected from the hot day and the assumption that all of this moisture came from rain. But it was so deep that it moves so fast that it was so cool that he do that it must be something else. Phantom river water although river around here would've been a strange sight. And yet here he was, in the middle of a river, watching his livelihood disintegrate and holding onto the slimmest hope that anyone who had been in any of his rooms was still alive. Fourteen people had checked it the day before. He was certain they would all be gone to God before long. unless you do something
What the hell could he do? He could barely stay on his feet, the kid behind him who was in much better shape hadn't even waded out this far yet and now Shane was supposed to do something to save the people at his hotel. He couldn't. He could look for his love, and he could convince Robert to look for her, but that was all.
He was sad for the hotel people but they were old news. Goners. After this there might as well never even have been a hotel.
A
"I think I see her, Mr. Williams!" Robert shouted excitedly. Shane almost swallowed his spit.
"Mr. Williams, over here!" the boy shouted again as Shane turned back around and saw the shovel coming for his head too late.
Robert dug the shovel into the ground and angled his chest forward to better burrow through the surf. It was a shame the old guy had to go, but it was a new world now. It was clear to him that everything from this point on had different rules, that pre-flood and post-flood lives were fractured and distant from each other.
He would reign over this new landscape. Would this Joanna be his queen or just another fuddy duddy in his way?
As the downpour begin to finally unleash itself from the pregnant sky above, Joanna knew two things. She knew she should find cover and that most likely that cover was inside her hotel room, with all her things, and hadn't she always loved listening to the rain on the roof as a child? The other thing she knew was that she needed to get up a tree. This was a more subdued and quieter urge, but she also felt it came from a place of deep wisdom, a calming neutral consciousness that just felt, that for her, being up a fucking tree was in her goddamn best interest. In the rain continue to fall as she jog to her room and it began to fall in a more and more maniacal maddening ka thumpa thump and raindrops as big as hailstones denting car hoods. As she ran she felt she was being scored on by a whole team of water polo idiots with balloons. And some of the softball sized fists of water were icy cold.
In anticipation for unlocking her front door, Joanna punched her hand into her pocket and pulled out a key, and grasped it by the little wire coil loop that served as it's keychain ornament.
A glob of water smacked it to the ground, which was now seven or 8 inches under a rising tide murky with swirling sediment beneath the surface. She'd dropped the keys.
"Fuck!"
up a tree get up a fucking tree and hurry the fuck up
By the time she started to really run the water was too high it she was plunged forward. She was no longer anywhere near where her her room was, she veered off to the right and headed toward a copse of what had to be some version of pine, it had to be pine or else she was screwed.
She pulled yourself out of the icy water and made off for the trees again. This time she made it. It was a Spruce and tightly packed with branches and twigs at every level. The bark sloughed off into her eyes with every reach, the twigs poking her in the side and back and rivulets of blood ran down her leg from where she punctured her knee driving it up in order to make the next foothold.
Here you are that voice said.
Joanna stopped climbing and held on for her life. The roar of falling water all around her only got louder until she was convinced she was screaming and couldn't hear it.
Robert felt something slow there between his legs River fish? What kind a river fish
"'Cuda be? Walleye be damned."
He'd grown-up neighboring an old guy who only had girls but had always secretly wished for a boy was always was offering to take him fishing, and with his dad not around and his mom working all the time he took his neighbor up on it and went fishing with him. He wasn't even 10 the first time. Robert was good at fishing and his neighbor was good at getting him alone and taking his pants off.
There were certain people in this world who just had to be removed. Robert had to leave this from such a young age that his first experience with murder had happens when he was only 14. He tied his neighbors balls to a bag of bricks and thrown the bag down a well while the man screamed crying at the exit.
He recorded the man screams and send the mp3 to the police. They would never suspect him, all they knew was that the man who lived in the house beside them, the football coach the paragon all they knew was that he been murdered in the gruesome fashion. That is if he ended up dying. He was in critical condition at the intensive care unit sans huevos. The police wouldn't do any investigation until the neighbor was dead, but it was good as.
The next time Robert killed someone came almost an accident but not quite. He was in college and coming home from a party a little bit smashed, riding a bike his own bike that he just stolen back from a bike rack outside of his freshman meal hall. It had a different lock on it but Robert picked it pretty swiftly with a nifty little thing he'd gotten from his spunky uncle Nick who is serving 25 to 50 for making two men try a risky jump off the roof into a parking lot.
He'd been riding his bike back along the rivers edge when he met with the out of nowhere force of someone running at him full on, throwing him from the bike and landing him on the bank of the river. A root stuck in his back.
That had been the accident part. The not accidental part was how he had tracked that guy down a month later.
Robert likes picking locks but sometimes people needed to be erased. And once you came to that idea in the first place – he thought about the man he'd smashed in the face with the haft of a shovel. The water crested his navel and a fin caught the corner of his vision - a flip and a splash before it rose out of the water and in his direction. It wasn't the biggest pike he'd seen but it was still pretty plump and he had time to think ripe before it sounds against his neck and bit his shoulder in a man fish collision
A toe treading on concrete below then causes a slip and though the fish was passed him he is under and thrashing around it's gnashing on chunks of his under arm thunderous pain drumming and his brain but he pulled himself back into stock and just picked himself up out of the river and tore the fish in half.
He understood this was different, these were weird things - strange times, but he wasn't going to die like that.
After that everything seemed easier. The water started to recede. The rain slackened to almost nothing. The dark and thick in the clouds became more ethereal, ambient fog lighting the steam.
Had it all been a dream?
Robert looked at the blood on his hands. The fish? A man?
One disappointing thing about Lester Battle’s poverty is his inability to keep hold of loose change. Yesterday, at the Ogilvie Metra station, he had to turn out all six pockets before the last nickel needed to complete the 2.35 fare to Ravenswood showed itself.
When he awakes in seven minutes, he’ll roll off the mattress and realize the same thing he realized last night, before chewing his nails in the dark and listening to his belly.
What he'll realize again is this: he doesn’t have two dollars for today’s commute downtown. He doesn’t have two dollars anywhere. His change sock is limp, the only trace of its use a green patina left by pennies long spent. He’ll check it anyway, in the bottom drawer of his desk, his hand coming away greasy and smelling of metal, fabric-softener and sweaty fungus.
That is all seven minutes away. For now, he is asleep.
Yesterday, Lester Battle pulled a twenty dollar bill from an ATM machine. Following that, he touched YES on the keypad. At once he began to sweat, and the soup in his gut churned like it had when he’d gotten his grades at DePaul. YES was not what he'd meant to touch. He’d just told the machine that he wanted a piece of paper with several numbers on it. Numbers he’d avoided looking at for almost three months.
The paper with the numbers on it rolled out. The numbers told him he had seventeen cents left in his checking account, and that his savings account was empty. The twenty dollar bill in his hand was the last bit of money he had.
All of this meant he would have to get the job. So yesterday, Lester put everything he had - all seventeen metaphorical cents - into the interview.
The three men had looked at him, told him they’d enjoyed his presentation (as always), and that he should return for a follow-up interview today at the same time.
“Go out and tell Jim we’re ready for him.”
The opening was a creative engineering position with a company called LPaso, based out of Texas. The position had come about when the engineer previously filling it had talked his body into throwing itself onto the third rail of an elevated train. Lester heard about this from a friend, one of the four or five people in Chicago he had any kind of relationship with.
That man’s name was Jim, and he’d been interviewing for the same position every day, excluding weekends, alongside Lester. The controlling interest in the firm, three creative engineers themselves, had pared the field down to two in a week-long process, one that had Lester feeling close to victory, and some sort of stability.
That had been five months ago.
Yesterday, Lester left the interview room exhausted and demoralized. It was a state he’d grown used to. He’d worked up a sweat again, trying this time to perfect his words with a pinwheel of activity. He smiled in what he hoped was a contagious way, but the three men watched impassively. He threw his arms along with his enunciations, swirling them into motions meant to illustrate and then persuade. The routine was so familiar he put all of it at the front of his brain while he receded behind to watch. He was a television show that had been recorded long ago, and his body was the screen. Sitting quietly in the back of his mind while his body gesticulated he had pondered two pigeons he’d seen at the Clyborn Metra stop, as sleepy travelers boarded. The pigeons lived atop the roof of a building, one of them elevated on a bit of duct work. The other one paced back and forth in front of it, pleading.
-Come down, won’t you?
-I have business up here. I’m closer to the sky. The world isn’t so gray.
-Don’t you love me anymore?
By and by his body stopped its enunciating, and the interview was over once again. He stopped watching the pigeons and retook control of his body. The three men were staring at him impassively.
“We enjoyed your presentation as always, Mr. Battle. Go out and tell Jim we’re ready for him.”
Jim was sitting alone in the waiting room. The waiting room was a small cube of white with one black chair and three doors. The chair sat against the only empty wall, and sitting in it one could imagine his future through any of the three symbols of opportunity, as long as one of the futures involved vomiting to death in a toilet. The room became a part of you after a while. Sometimes when Lester receded into the back of his mind he sat in the room, but never while he was physically present. It was the same with Jim - who had told him of a dream he’d had about the toilet door, which sat opposite the chair.
“I’m sitting there,” he’d said, and this had been in the first month of interviews, when both of them had still been young and optimistic, “I’m sitting in that room in my dream and the door across from me opens and a man dressed as a nurse comes out and says, ‘Hello Jim, the doctor will see you now.’ He goes back through the door and I get up, realizing there must be something wrong with me that I’m at a doctor’s office, and I follow him. Inside the room is the toilet from LPaso. It’s wearing a stethoscope.” The two men rarely told stories anymore. Yesterday, in the waiting room, Lester nodded at Jim, and the other man - who was wearing a tweed suit that had been patched several times and whose face was obscured by a cyclone of beard - nodded back.
“Go for a beer after?” Jim said.
They often went for a beer after. Whoever got out first met the other across the street, at a bar called the Thirsty Genius. Yesterday, in the waiting room, it was just another routine. In the back of his mind he was contemplating the last twenty, which had been pared to eighteen during his commute as the conductor swept through the car, furiously punching holes in differently colored pieces of rail currency. That eighteen would be cut in half after the beer (this would be Lester’s turn to pick up the tab), and he’d lose another 2.35 on the trip back. Stop this, he yelled to the screen, but the man in the rerun nodded again and walked forward, pulling the opposite door open.
Outside, the sky was dark and swirling, rain brewing in the bellies of incorporeal monsters. It started to pour, and umbrellas opened like flowers to sunlight. Lester kept his head down and sprinted across the street, feeling the water already leaking up through the holes in his shoe-bottoms. He waited for several important-looking women on cell phones to pass and then he pulled open the door to the Genius and was breathed inside.
The Thirsty Genius is a themed bar with a reading room occupied by six large leather reading chairs and a bookcase filled with literature. Most of the bar’s flooring is tile, but the reading room is carpeted a dark red. There were three men in there, all of them dressed in suits and sipping whiskey in the leather chairs. Lester sat on a stool at the bar.
The bartender, whose name is Adam, glanced at him, nodding. Lester nodded at the nod. This is the currency of male interaction. It is the signal that more varied and interesting conversation is not needed, that all of the usual things are a given. It’s a hard life, and we’re all in this together, and one of us may be in a better place than the other right now but that can change, will inevitably change, and back again, and all we need to do at this moment is acknowledge the existence of the other. Adam brought him a beer glass, empty, and looked at Lester. Lester nodded. He would drink.
The glass filled.
Lester unfilled it.
The clock on the wall had no second hand, but the minute hand clicked along twenty-five times. Jim walked into the place. He sat on Lester's left, and nodding as he did so. Adam nodded back and came over with a beer glass. Empty.
“You get the job?” Lester said.
“I got the job.” Jim said.
It was a joyless monotone, and another routine they had with one another. How much of his existence was habit? He went on with it all unthinking, living the same day over and over – Mon, Tues, Wednes – the labels ceased to matter. It was always just Day.
“I’m not doing this tomorrow,” Jim said. This, finally, something new. Lester felt the tingle of something like surprise, like excitement. A sweet, tangy confusion.
“What? The beer?”
“This.”
“The job?”
“I’m not coming in. Or if I am, it’s to tell them it’s over.”
“Oh.” Lester didn’t know what to do. What did it mean? Would he get the job if he did his dance for one more day?
“I ran out of money a month ago, Les. I’ve been going on credit. I had three hundred left before my limit, and now I’ve gone through that. All I’ve got is some cash.”
“I know.”
“You too? Christ, they’ve been stringing us along for five months. And who’s been doing the work? I had a dream last night, want to hear it? He still works there. Dead guy, mister third rail, still works there. They've got him pumping out projects. He sits at his desk with his head down, bones dragging a pencil across paper around the clock because it's all he can do to keep from rotting.”
“That’s ridiculous,”
“It’s irrelevant, is what it is. I can’t do this anymore and I’m going to use the rest of my money to buy some thermal underwear and a tent. I’ve got till the end of the month to get out of my apartment and then I’ll be homeless. And I'm going to do it smart.”
They sat quietly for several minutes, and then Lester paid for the two beers and left. Jim watched him go.
On the Metra, Lester found a spot on the upper level on a seat that folded down from the wall next to a skateboarding youth and a fat man reading a book in Cyrillic. When he levered the seat down there was considerable resistance, unlike a movie theater seat or a pew kneeler. He wondered if he were to lay across four or five seats if they would push him back up into the cold metal and pinch his face against the glass. Lester could ride like that, he’d decided. Something about the position seemed appropriate. But all these were occupied. He’d have to wait for another opportunity.
The fat man laughed, a kind of choking sniffle that kicked his skin into a body-wide ripple. Lester wondered what, in Cyrillic, could be so funny. He leaned forward and squinted at the cover of it, which was a painting of a dog wearing a bow tie. There was no title. Some things, Lester had learned, had no name but were still very important. And then there were people like him. Fourteen minutes later he was at the counter of the CVS at Lawrence and Damen. He’d decided on two packs of Ramen noodles (.40), a bag of peanut M&M’s (1.59), and a small pouch of beef jerky for dinner (2.29) This came to 4.48, tax included, and from a five he’d received two quarters and two pennies.
“If you’d had our card,” the woman behind the counter said, and she was attractive except for a very large mole just above and to the right of her lip, “You could have gotten another beef jerky, it was two for one.” Lester shrugged it off and took his bag, but inside he was raging at himself. For months he’d declined a card, doubting that he’d be back enough to use it, yet every time he stepped inside the pharmacy slash everything store he’d thought to himself, here I am again. How much more could he have saved, or eaten?
He walked home. The cable had been turned off. In his room, he put his head under his pillow and willed himself to sleep. Around nine he woke up, feeding himself M&M’s one after the other in steady rhythm like a slots player with a cup of nickels. He dropped a yellow one and it rolled.
At three in the morning the screams of a small girl woke him. She lives in the bedroom above his. The screams descended into a flurry of pounding feet and terrible sobs. He watched the ceiling, hoping cracks would open up and she’d drop through. He’d save her, though he was in no position for it. He’d save her. The sobs went on for half an hour and still he made no move. His heart was pounding, and there was anger there too. I’d go to her, I’d soothe her back to sleep. Her parents didn’t do this. He knew why, or supposed he did.
In his first month of living in the apartment he’d made the trip upstairs twice. The first time her father had opened the door, a small Eastern European man with eyebrows like caterpillars. Lester had stood under his stare for a full thirty seconds. Behind the little man the sobs of a small child continued.
“I live in the apartment below yours,” he’d finally said. “And I have work in the morning. Can’t you do something about...can you make your daughter stop crying?” The man blinked. Another thirty seconds went by, and Lester began to get the feeling he was the one being asked to keep the noise down.
“Well. I’m sure you’ll do your best. Sorry to bother you.” The little man closed the door. The little girl kept crying. Lester went downstairs and brewed himself a pot of coffee.
Two nights later he’d found himself knocking on that door again. He’d worked himself up to have words with the man who took so much offense at being bothered early in the morning while his daughter to roused the rest of the building. But the little Eastern European man didn’t open the door this time. Instead it was a little Eastern European woman. She had red eyes, and looked up at him hopefully.
He’d cleared his throat. “Sorry to bother you so early. My name is Lester, and I live in the -”
“You are of the downstairs.” Her voice was tired. The little girl sobbed from somewhere in the darkness behind. “You come to see why I not fix the noise.”
“Yes.”
“We not go to her when she cry. We want it, but she not let us.”
“She doesn’t let you?”
“She cry for the suffering of all world. Say we must leave her. I am sorry to you.”
For three months he had let her wake him, had thought about that conversation. The suffering of all world. What had he to complain about? Not getting the job he wanted? Just hours ago, the girl awoke him again. She cried until she stopped, until the suffering was no more than a dark, dull throb within the breast of the earth, and Lester let himself back under the warm eyelid of sleep. Watch - the alarm on his phone is about to go off. His brain will be plucked from its fantasies and he’ll mouth swear words into the sunlight.
Watch - it happens just that way. His mouth tastes horrible. His eyes are hard and sticky. Lester gropes for the change sock.
In the shower he considers the bank receipt. There are seventeen cents left. With his fifty-two cents that will give him sixty-nine. He gets dressed and steps outside, where the first nibbles of autumn find his cheeks. It is four blocks to the bank, and once he’s there he plays the coming moment in his head. He’ll go in, stand in line, pull up to the first available teller and pass a withdrawal slip across the table. 0000.17, he’ll have written there, along with his name and his account number. He or she will look at the number and assume he’s made a mistake, say something like “Sir, did you mean to withdraw seventeen dollars?” He’ll shake his head and say, too quiet to hear at first, “No, cents,” until she makes him say it again, louder, and everyone will look over, wondering just what kind of poor this man is that he is even bothering.
He steps away from the bank and looks around. There are several cars parked along the street here, vehicles made and modeled to suit bank managers and the like. All parked at meters. Lester considers his own attire.
“Excuse me,” he says to a passing woman. “I’m short a quarter for the meter.” He waves at one of the cars, a deep black Saab. “Do you happen to have one?”
“Oh, I’m sure I must. Here.” She stops and drops a hand into a round purse, digging. It’s a quarter she pulls out. He feigns putting it into the meter, palming it instead. The woman doesn’t look back. He waits, and here come some more.
In five minutes Lester has enough for the Metra.
The waiting room at LPaso is empty. He knocks on the door to the interview room and then opens it. The three men are sitting there. Lester is late, has to be late. Jim hasn’t come at all. He takes his place in front of the room. “So, you all know my qualifications.” They don’t nod. Lester doesn’t move. Doesn’t recede into the back of his mind, doesn’t start his body on its daily exercise. Instead, he bows.
“Thank you. I hope to hear from you soon.” He goes to the door and opens it, and leaves. None of the three men says a thing.
There is something inside of him, a sharp cube of something that is threatening to poke its corners out. His ribs sting. There is an ocean behind his eyes, and Jim is gone. At the Genius he sits alone, and Adam buys him a drink, able to see that this man is in no position to be sober. At the base of Lester’s throat a soft clicking begins, like a windup clock.
Miles away, behind a box of books and electrical cords, ants bore holes into the shell of a yellow peanut M&M and begin their harvest of its meat.
Television had arms and legs and a face that was flat and bright and capable of putting out any possible combination of 307,200 pixels, which happened to be a lot of combinations, since each pixel had the potential of being any one of 16,581,375 different colors at any moment. (His old friend Calculator, who was always making useless observations, would have told him that the total number of possible faces Television could make was 5,093,798,400,000 - but Calculator was dead. He’d been impaled by a herd of charging gazelles on an African Safari the summer before.) In fact, Television was much luckier than most of his relatives, since the men in his familyµ had a problem nobody could solve. They kept themselves inside and when they had to get through doorways they turned sideways. Some of the unluckier of them, like his oldest brother Peter, spent all day faces to the ground, unable to move.
Television’s head was just right, and even though he felt guilty for his high-definition deficiency, he was grateful that his head was light enough to keep on his shoulders. And people would kill for a face like his. He could show any image, reduced to a native resolution of 640x480, in full color. If he’d done any thinking about what a blessing this was, he might have become a rich and powerful man. Instead, Television took what was given to him. He made tenuous connections with other people, like those he worked with at the storage building. He engaged in terse conversation with a woman called Lamp who was always his cashier at Capital Video.
The face he most often made was a neutral kind of gray, much the same as when he slept. This is what he did mostly, because it was cheaper than going out and he saved on electricity. When Television slept, he dreamed of many things - foremost of which seemed always to be making it with Lamp, even though the only time he was ever particularly attracted to her was in the dream. When he saw her at the video store, with her knobby knees and ovoid wooden chest, he found himself wanting very much to display a picture of disgust (the one he’d chosen was of a particularly old and warty looking toaster man who had two fingers down his bread-slots, chrome glistening with tears) but usually he just looked away, pretending he’d done so because her face gave off too many Watts.
When he came home from Capital Video one Thursday, he slid a tape into his slot and sat wonderingly as his face was made to do hundreds of thousands of wondrous things in a row. He forgot about his strange dream-lust for Lamp, and the way his subconscious seemed intent on viewing her plug. After the video had played through, and his face was numb with static and glowing dully in the dark, Television lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, where the ghosts of his faces danced. Then fell asleep, and dreamed of the perfect combination.
The perfect combination.
In the dream, he understood everything about it - there was one face he could make in any situation that would help him achieve the desired outcome. One combination of color, of pixels in or out of order.
It wasn’t something he understood while conscious, because when he woke up his head was all muzzy and there was still a static charge built up between his speaker and his buttons that would shock him when he adjusted his antenna. By then he had forgotten all about it. If he had, however, managed to remember his dreams about the perfect combination, it’s possible that he would have messed around trying to find it, and might have been doing that instead of going to the Post Office on Thursday afternoon.
He went there to mail a letter to the woman of his dreams, a beautiful big-bodied black nymphette named Refrigerator. He wasn’t sure what kind of love letters Refrigerator liked, because she’d never responded to his previous attempts. Television wasn’t even sure she remembered him from high school, but he had a good feeling about this next letter. Here is what it said:
“My dearest Refrigerator, I hope this letter finds you well and in good health. Since my last letter I have been very lucky. On Monday I woke up and found a newspaper on my doorstep, even though I don’t get the newspaper. It was the Sun Times. Just the day before I had been downtown and there was a tall blender-headed man wearing a full-bodied bib yelling, ‘Sun Time! Sun Time! Sun Time man, Sun Time son!’ and I considered giving him the fifty cents for one copy. Lucky that I did not! On Tuesday my gas was to be shut off, but they must not have noticed, because it wasn’t until last night that I ran out of hot oil. I think the luckiest I’ve been so far, however, is me right now, writing these words. I am imagining you reading them, smiling, perhaps even giving your expansion valve a quick tickle. But I am not writing to be presumptuous.
I am writing, my glad lass, because today I love you. Again.
Yours, Television.”
On the back of the single sheet of triple-folded paper inside of the envelope was a list of all of the ways Television had been lucky since his last letter. The last item on the list was, ‘Lucky to mail this letter to such a splendid gal.’
And so Television walked to the Post Office, which was fairly well occupied, especially with men in business suits who all seemed to have some variation of facsimile device resting on their shoulders. Television didn’t usually get along well with these types, so he kept to the back of the line and tried not to display any of his dislike faces. He held his letter patiently between thumb and forefinger. There was a box to drop it in, but he needed a stamp, and he only had a plastic card to pay with instead of the coins he needed for the stamp machine. He didn’t like putting coins in the machine anyway, because it made him feel dirty.
He was waiting like this when the door busted open and a thick muscular sort of man came through, waving what looked like a gun in the air. His head was an elongated type of radio with two large speakers on either side. He’d pulled over his head a very thinly stretched light brown stocking, the kind used by women who wore dresses. “GET ON THE FLOOR AND PUT YOUR MONEY ON THE COUNTER,” the man with the boombox face boomed. His speakers pulsed behind the pantyhose. He had no screen, and Television supposed that being given only one way to look had simply forced the man to adopt the personality others must always have assumed he had. It was rather sad. The other people in the bank began to drop, trying to comply with the boombox’s nonsensical demands. They began pulling money from their pockets.
Television, however, simply stood. He wasn’t sure what he thought about the situation, except for that he was slightly annoyed that he might not get to mail the letter.
“Do you mean, instead,” his speakers began to pulse, “That we should put our money on the counter and then get on the floor?”
The robber seemed confused, and stepped forward as if to strike Television, so Television sat down. The robber looked to the others.
“DO WHAT HE SAID. GET UP - SLOWLY - AND PUT YOUR MONEY ON THE COUNTER. THEN GET DOWN AND PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK WHERE I CAN SEE THEM.”
Television got up again, slowly. For a moment he was the only one standing, and the robber turned toward him. The facsimile men pleaded with him with their hands to sit down, but they didn't understand. Television had to mail a letter, and if he couldn't do it today? He would have to wait another whole day. Postal employees had the rest of the day off after a robbery, didn’t they? What if more lucky things happened? He could just see himself opening the envelope and having to rewrite it all to include the day’s events. His only hope was if he could get a stamp and drop it in the blue box before the mail truck left.
“Excuse me,” he pulsed at the robber, “Do you have a stamp? I simply need a stamp for this letter.”
The robber backed away, still waving his pistol.
“YOU THERE, WITH THE GLOWING FACE. STOP TALKING TO ME. I HAVE THE GUN. NO STAMP.”
Television displayed consternation (which was a repeating loop of film that showed a microwave-headed man finding himself at a path's forked junction and raising his arms to grasp the sides of his head in mock horror), and took a step forward.
“Sir, since you have the gun and most clearly hold the power over all of us, could you ask and see if anyone else here has a stamp I could borrow?” The robber shook his head slowly, his angry expression made one of incredulity by its movement.
“SOMEONE WITH A STAMP, GIVE THIS MAN A STAMP SO HE WILL SHUT UP. THEN PUT YOUR MONEY ON THE COUNTER AND GET BACK ON THE GROUND.”
Before he could move, stamps were being stuffed into Television’s hand, all kinds. The facsimile men were mildly frightened, and showed this by rattling the phones on their heads and making their buttons buzz. Some ejaculated heated paper bits that had writing on them. “Please don’t shoot,” were printed on some, and on others, “I have a job.” Television thought that if any of the men had families, they would have printed that instead.
They shuffled toward the counter and began dumping piles of cash and coins there. The postal workers did the same, calling back for more when the collection appeared meager. Mail bags were brought forward, envelopes were ripped open, and money rained down. Television stood where he was. The robber watched all of this and then turned to Television, motioning with his gun that he’d like him to do the same: go to the counter and drop some money. Television's face became an embarrassing ensemble of humorous mishaps culled from a video of bloopers.
“Oh, this is awkward, since I never carry cash.” He pulled out the plastic card, which made the boom box man jump, and held it out. “I only debit. I can tell you my PIN number so you can get to my bank account. I think there’s fourteen or fifteen dollars in there.”
The robber seemed to spend more time thinking. Then he waved his gun dismissively.
“KEEP THE CARD.”
Television put it back into his pocket. The others had gotten back onto the floor, and were crossing their arms behind their backs. The robber stepped forward and collected his bags of money. These he put by the door. Then he turned back to the shuddering mass and Television.
“I’M GOING TO KILL ONE OF YOU BEFORE I GO, JUST SO THAT NEXT TIME I COME HERE I GET THE RESPECT I DESERVE. DOES ANY OF YOU WANT TO VOLUNTEER?”
None of the other men raised a hand, and neither did Television. However, what was working against him was the fact that he had never sat back down. The robber walked over to him and put the gun to his screen.
“HOW NICE OF YOU,” the boombox boomed.
The barrel of the gun touched Television’s glass and he felt it make a tiny scratch. He almost protested, but then he realized something. Something that seemed very important, even in relation to the fact that he hadn’t yet chosen even one of the stamps in his hand to peel off and stick onto his envelope to Refrigerator.
The realization was this: he was about to die.
The faces he made then were random, a compilation of all those faces he was saving up to use someday. A small mixer-headed girl on a swing set. A tree being sawed apart. Seven men jumping in the air all at the same time. A box with a latch on it. While he made these faces his mind tried to bring him back to his dream about the perfect combination, and being so flustered as he was with the realization that his letter might not get to Refrigerator and that even if it did he would be dead and couldn’t enjoy her assumed reception of it, he listened to what it said.
Here is what Television’s mind said: “There is a combination of pixels so perfect that will make this man want to keep us alive instead of killing us.” Since he’d never spent time trying to concoct the perfect combination, he was in a bad place. He’d have to throw something together quickly, and hope.
“Would you wait one moment, sir?”
The robber cocked his gun. Television peeled a stamp apart. He affixed it to the corner of the envelope addressed to Refrigerator, all the while imagining different combinations of pixels. Finally he chose one, just as the man was about to pull the trigger.
“I’M ABOUT TO PULL THE TRIGGER.” The robber's booming was hard to hear over the clacking and chattering of phones in carriages and buttons from the facsimile-headed men.
Television made a face - a woman’s torso, completely naked except for a pair of bright pink underwear.
“If you delay your putting a hole in my head,” Television said, “I can give you a peek at what goes on beneath the underwear.”
He was stalling, had in fact not been able to come up with any combination of pixels he would have considered perfect. This seemed to be working, but an even bigger problem loomed. The robber stepped back.
“YES I WOULD LIKE TO SEE UNDER THE PANTS.” The bigger problem was this: Television didn’t know what went on beneath the underwear. He’d never been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of it. On his face, the underwear came off, but instead of whatever the robber had been expecting was a large blurry ball. “If you delay your putting a hole in my head for just a little longer, I will unblur the ball.” The robber nodded.
“YES YES UNBLUR THE BALL I WANT TO SEE HER PLUG.” Television considered. He could perhaps buy himself a little more time, just a few more seconds to make sure that the perfect combination was extra perfect. So he unblurred the ball. He displayed what he’d always imagined the female genitalia to look like, and waited. He only had to delay the boombox-headed man for a few more seconds before he showed the perfect combination. The robber paused, as if fogged with arousal, and then brought up the gun.
POP.
Television’s face shot outward, covering the robber in tiny shards of glass and drops of color. The heads of the facsimile men rang shrilly and they reached frantically to answer their own calls. Television fell to his knees.
As he died, he thought again of rewriting the letter. Instead of adding to all the lucky bits, he would just tear it up and start new.
The new letter, the one Television would never write, went like this: “My dearest Refrigerator, I hope this finds you well. It is regrettable that I won’t be able to join you for our first date. You see, my darling, I made it look too much like a squid.”
Todd wasn’t late to work yet, but the way the lady ahead of his was driving, he didn’t have a chance of making it on time.
Her brown Mercury had just a minute or so ago eked through a yellow light, leaving him idling at the red, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. When it finally turned green he sped through several blocks, feeling like he might have a chance but there she was again - the same car. Going twenty miles an hour.
Traffic toward him was steady, so he couldn’t pass even if he wanted to.
He watched with increasing dismay as she took each one of his turns at a glacial pace, and he knew it wasn’t like this but it started to feel like the lady in the brown Mercury was out to ruin his life.
A dull itch rested at the crown of his cranium, roughly the size of a dime. Todd touched a finger where he thought it was and scratched once, tentatively, a single fingernail running across his scalp. It felt good.
His fingernails weren’t as long as he would have wanted due to habitual chewing, but it still felt so good to scratch. He almost forgot how annoyed he was with the slowmobile ahead of him.
When it looked like she was going to slow down and turn into a driveway he mashed his teeth together, but it turned out to be a false alarm; probably she had forgotten how to push the gas pedal. She kept on, and so did the minute hand on his watch.
He didn’t even want to look.
They passed through a school zone and the old lady slowed to ten miles per hour.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “This is getting excessive.”
Cars behind him started to honk. Todd hoped they could see he wasn’t the problem.
He rolled down his window, and outside it was cool, humid. “Drive faster!” he wanted to yell out of it, “You’ll live longer!” But he was timid, so he rolled the window back up.
He scratched the itch again, which felt good, but also he could feel the skin behind his head was raised and warm, and with ridges like and potato chip. Not in a big area, but had it felt like this a second ago?
Huh. Something bit me?
Anyway, it felt real good to scratch it, so he did it harder. The lady in the car ahead finally took a right but by then he didn’t even care about her anymore.
Inside him were wonderful feelings he’d never had, it was a peace, and a pleasure, and things felt just fine. The more he scratched the more of a better person it felt like he was becoming. This was what he’d been missing. This was living!
The driver in the car behind Todd's laid on his horn. The itch that had been the center of his attention for the last thirty seconds was gone.
He was only going fifteen miles an hour, and the lady in front of him was no longer in front of him.
He stomped on the gas and drove, feeling a little out of sorts, not even noticing the smear of blood his fingertips left on the steering wheel.
He arrived at work eighteen minutes late. On the way up to the fifth floor, where his office was, he kept his head down and his eyes on the floor.
When no one seemed to notice his tardiness, he straightened up, plastered on a smile, and walked to his cube. He hadn’t run into his boss, and that was good.
He sat down in his task chair and yawned. I’m really going to get something done. Then he noticed the little sticky note on his monitor.
He snatched it off.
My office, it said Then, with a downward scrawl, it had the initials M.S. Martin Shannock. His boss’s boss. Todd stood up, feeling bad. Time to face the music.
“Come in,” Shannock called through the door when he knocked. The man was in his overlarge chair behind his desk and was now fiddling with a pen.
“Mr. Baron.”
Something about the man unnerved Todd. His boss held his head cocked to the side and with flared nostrils, as if to gather the stink of his victim’s fear.
“You wanted to see me?”
His boss's head swiveled like a desk lamp, pinpointing the exact location of Todd's face. He smiled without humor. Todd tried to keep his face neutral.
“Seems you weren't here on time today. I hear it’s not such an out of the ordinary thing for you. How can you expect me to keep my employees motivated if their coworkers don't show up?”
Sweat broke out on the back of Todd's neck.
“Mr. Shannock, sir, I did show up, it's just I had...” There was no end to the sentence. Shannock finished it for him.
“Had more important things to do? Things that couldn't wait until after work? There's going to be some changes around here.”
“I understand that, sir. I just made a mistake this time. It won't happen again.”
“You're right - it won't. I'll give you to the end of the day to pack up your things and be out of here.”
“Mr. Shannock-”
His boss reached out and jammed a button on his intercom.
“Security?”
“Don’t bother,” Todd said, and left.
Cleaning out his desk was fairly simple; the only things that occupied it regularly were himself, his computer, and a series of binders and legal pads he kept in one of the drawers. He pulled them out one by one as he bent over, and put them on the floor. The thinly carpeted floor did its best to muffle the noise, but his coworkers were already sticking their necks out of their cubicles.
Hot-eared and prickling he kicked shut the drawer, snatched up the box and speed-walked to the elevator. He felt the silent gaze of the whole floor on him as he pressed the down button.
“Merry Christmas everyone!” he yelled. It was November.
As soon as he stepped in he heard them start to talk.
The elevator stopped on the fourth floor. A small, homely woman stepped on and made eye contact. She nodded at Todd; he grimaced. She stood beside him, facing the door.
“Hope you find a place to work,” she said.
He tried to think of the last time he was really happy. He thought about driving to work, in the car. That itch. As he thought of it the box he was holding all of it seemed to get heavier, and he knelt to put it down.
Then he was rubbing the ridgy potato chip on the back of his neck again, feeling it swell to his fingertips and plead for his nails, so he scratched.
He was in an elevator but inside him the sun was rising.
“Are you...are you all right, mister?” The homely woman with mousy hair was turned to him half-worried, but Todd could tell she was just as eager to leave the elevator.
Todd didn't answer. Or he did, but it came from his eyes. If only you could see.
He scratched harder.
The small woman whimpered, moving herself further into the corner of the elevator. Todd took no notice.
The door opened and the mousy woman fled, crying out in scared little gasps. Todd's scalp was split open atop his head and still he scratched, both hands going wildly now. Blood pooled and ran off him, ran down his face and collected in small drops on the elevator floor. The drops joined other drops and no one got on. The door closed. By the time Todd reached the first floor the itch had once again disappeared, and both of his hands were stained red.
Back in the car, Todd swooned. The purple tree hanging from his rearview mirror seemed to dance. He fumbled with the keys, and they kept slipping out of his hands. Finally he was able to jam one of the bloody keys into the ignition and start the car.
He was on the highway, on the way home, where he would tell his mother - no, he no longer lived there, his parents no longer lived there.
He’d hopped on the freeway to get to a home that hadn’t been for more than fifteen years.
He pulled over. His head rocked against the steering wheel and he was aware he'd pass out soon. The loss of blood or the pain would do it, although the pain wasn't as bad anymore. He struggled to look out his side view mirror, feeling giddy.
His door was jerked open and he was being pulled out of the car by a pair of burly, blue-suited men.
“Get on the ground!” they yelled at him. “Put your hands behind your back!” Todd was so surprised he was giggling, and they slammed his head down onto the road as a car came by. The headlights looked pale to him. Cold metal circlets were tightened around his wrists, and then the cops were off him. They began to talk.
First cop: What the hell?
Second cop: Looks like he beat the shit out of himself. Look at his hands.
First cop: Never mind his hands, look at his head. He's scalped himself or something.
Second cop: We need to get him to the hospital; he's losing too much blood.
First cop: Let’s leave him - they’ll just say we did it if we bring him in
Second cop: I can’t do it, Homer
First cop: Okay, you grab his legs...
“…get…”
“…arms…”
“…car…”
The itch woke him up again. Streetlights were washing over him in quick spurts and he realized where he must be. He could see the bars that separated him from his captors (or rescuers, if you looked at it like that) and he heard the muffled radio going. This was the regular radio, not to be confused with the police radio band which the men in blue use to spout such jargon as “What's your twenty?” and “Ten-four, good buddy.” Wait, wasn't it truckers who said that? Todd couldn't remember.
Todd tried to wrench his hands up to his head, but his cuffs were attached to some sort of hook in the back of the seat. He couldn't scratch.
A face appeared behind the bars.
“Settle down back there,” the cop said, “we're almost to the hospital.”
Todd's eyes flashed with desperation.
“I have to...I have to scratch! Unhook me quick!” He sat up and leaned forward, face almost to the bars.
“Looks like you've already done enough damage scratching,” the cop said. “Why don't you just lie back down and we'll be to the hospital in a minute.” Then, to his driving partner, “Hurry the hell up, Homer. This guy's a lunatic.”
Todd's itch multiplied tenfold. He could hear his aunt, or someone, laughing at him.
“This is Ali X. in the morning. All great rock, all the time. Up next, it's another Elton John classic,” the DJ on the radio
said.
The itch seemed to explode, traveling to all corners of his mind until Todd could feel it everywhere. He lost it.
...I remember when rock was young...
Screaming in frustration, Todd brought his head forward with all the force he could muster. His flesh met the metal webbing and separated, sending blood and hair to all corners of the squad car. One of the cops screamed, he thought the one not named Homer.
Todd brought his head back and rocketed it forward again, into the bloody mesh. This time he shook his head back and forth rapidly, metal wires scraping off whatever tissue remained on the top of his skull.
“Don't!” the cop in the passenger seat yelled, and the other cop shoved his foot down on the gas pedal. The sirens were back on, and Todd's head was traveling backward again, cocking it for another try.
The passenger side cop shoved his fingers through the mesh and held them there with wide eyes.
“Stop doing that, you're going to kill yourself!” He sounded more scared than authoritative.
Todd brought his head forward and broke the cop's fingers. The cop screamed again, this time in agony. He pulled his fingers from the separating mesh and looked at them stupidly. The policeman in the driver's seat swerved and there was a loud squeal. Then the car imploded, and Todd saw a yellow painted bumper driving through the windshield.
And as time seemed to stop around him, glass from the shattered windows spiraling through the air, the cops' stupid, uncomprehending faces slashed open, Todd threw his head forward one final time.
The itch fell silent.
IT WAS for any (or all) of the hundreds of thousands of reasons why the baby could not be kept that Enid walked to the bus stop.
The warm fog of early morning kept the roads clear and the sidewalks empty, almost as if the dull, smoggy mist was what kept Chicago sleeping, and somehow she was immune. She thought of the Wizard of Oz, and the poppies, and the snowflakes that wake the slumbering Dorothy with a convenient kiss of cold. The growing thing in her belly was her own not-so-convenient snowflake. She envied every person she didn't pass on the sidewalk, and started to wish a gust of wind would take the fog away. If only she'd been able to sleep she might feel better, because already the nurse on the phone had told her she couldn't eat or drink past midnight. She was hungry, and nervous. If nerves alone could kill, she supposed she could have cancelled the appointment.
The clinic she'd chosen (Family Planning Associates - their website had been bright pink and featured an African American woman with short dredlocks on the Abortion Services tab, and she'd either been smiling or wincing, Enid couldn't tell) was all the way downtown, on Washington, and the only appointment she'd been able to get that didn't coincide with work or school was at sevenq in the morning.
This morning.
That meant a fifteen minute walk from her apartment in River Forest down Lake Street to the bus stop, where she'd get on the Harlem Green Line bus that would take her almost ten blocks South before she'd have to get on another one going East on the Eisenhower.
She’s walking through the park. She sees a man wearing a baseball hat. She recognizes him. It’s the alien from when she’s smaller.
“Enid! I was hoping we could chat.”
“Oh! Hello. Mr… I’m sorry, I don’t rmeember.”
“Are you well? You don’t seem well.”
She was feeling rather faint. Shew as overheating, she was hot. She thought shew as falling over - but the man with the gray skin was there. He caught her.
A peculiar thing happened. Old memories that had been pushed out of the way for convencience rippled forward, as if she'd suddenly been reminded of something she'd been planning to do: something she'd not yet forgotten but had simply placed at the bottom of a long, long list.
What she remembered when she touched the alien was a meeting that took place some ten years before, in the damp late-afternoon of a lakeside forest, a meeting between a little girl and a tree fairy.
It had been a misty day when she was nine, at the cabin her aunt and uncle owned in up north of Muskegon, on Lake Michigan. And after several hours sitting in front of a screen filled with men pretending to be lions and bears as they smashed against each other over and over, she'd gone outside with a pair of boots and an umbrella to go exploring and play fairies. It was a game she played with the trees, moving trunk to trunk and imagining the little people living inside. She'd talk to them and carry their news to the next tree, and learn all about those fairies as well.
On that day she'd actually found one. A real fairie, not like the ones she imagined. It was a sort of man, with grayish skin and long limbs, curled around several branches and the trunk of a maple tree like a spider. He wore yellow robes that hung off him in waves, and he watched her as she approached. His face was kind, and beautiful.
"Hello," she said to it, "My name is Enid. Would you like to be my friend?"
The fairy nodded slightly and began to unwrap itself from the tree.
"Are you one of the fairies I've been talking to? What is your name?" The gray-skinned man was lowering itself to the ground. Its robes were beautiful. "What do your clothes feel like?"
The fairie man spoke. "My name is Icetoleshkan." It seemed to Enid that a great many buzzing syllables followed that, but she disregarded these and stuck out a hand. "Why hello Mr. Icy Toe!"
He eyed her hand, then cocked his head before nodding slightly and extending one of his own.
"Enid."
"Your clothes are very pretty. What do they feel like?"
"Here, you may have some." He tore a small bit (no, he pulled it - it was like marshmallows) from his sleeve and handed it to her.
It was warm in her hands, and it sparkled brighter now than it had a moment before. She rolled it between her palms and it became a ball. Then it melted back into the crevices between her fingers, but not through them.
"It's wonderful!"
The fairie man smiled wide. "It is a very special gorbflax." Then, seeing the confusion on her face, he twitched his ears. "Compound. Mixture. Alloy. It is a very special...material. It assumes the shape I want and that is how I wear it. It is keeping me alive. You may keep that piece if you like."
Enid held the sparkly ball to her chest. "Oh, of course, mister fairie sir, I always keep fairie presents." Never mind that no fairie had ever given her a present before. "Would you like to go with me down to the beach? It's just a walk, just down there." She pointed through the forest.
The fairie twitched its ears again. "And this will be acceptable to your parents?"
"Oh, of course. My parents let me go wherever I want to." And this was true. For the most part, they ignored her.
"Then yes, to the beach."
——
Now, at the bust stop, she blinked. The man in the yellow raincoat was not a man after all.
"Mr. Icy Toe," she breathed.
The alien merely nodded. "Enid. Are you all right? Here, I have a Kind bar.”
She fumbled for words. “Yes, no, thank you. The bus, are you here to ride the b-"
"I'm here for you. There is a wonderful park just behind us, I would like for you to take a walk with me if that is possible."
"Oh." She looked around. The Borders across the street was still closed, and the man waiting outside it had fallen asleep, propped up against the fake brick with his mouth hanging open.
"Well, actually I have somewhere to be. An appointment. I don't think I have time to..." She twirled her finger as she trailed off, the twirl representing whatever the alien wanted her to do with him.
"We know about your appointment. I'm asking for a favor to an old friend."
"What kind of favor?"
"A few minutes of your time, that is all."
"Well, the bus-"
"You will be back in time for your bus." There was no doubt in his face, only friendship, kindess. She was reminded again of the day she was nine, and he had taken her swimming.
Mr. Icy Toe was good. She'd known it then, and though it was harder at nineteen to trust, she knew it now as well.
"Okay. But only, you know, if-"
"Do not worry. You will keep your appointment, if that is what you choose to do."
He held his hand out once again, and she saw the material she'd first thought was a raincoat swimming a thin shine over his pale gray skin. She took it, and they walked into the park.
"What I have for you today, Enid, is a proposition. A way in which we can help each other. You see, we both find ourselves in a predicament. Mine, the one of my people, is one we will be struggling against for the rest of the time we remain here, on your planet. Yours is one you were planning to resolve today. I would like to persuade you to reconsider today's appointment, to have your offspring terminated."
"Oh...I'm sorry, but the decision has been made, I can't keep it."
"I will not ask you to keep it."
"I don't understand."
The alien raised his spindly hands. "I will start at the beginning. When my people first came here, ten of your Earth years ago, it was our mission to study you, and make contact if possible. As anthropologists, we preferred to remain invisible and so we put our vessels at the bottom of several different highly populated bodies of water around the world. I was stationed here, in Lake Michigan. It became immediately apparent through our study of your kind that final contact was going to be difficult, if not impossible."
"What's that? Final contact?"
"The moment when every citizen of your world has to, by observation and and experience, accept the existance of extraterrestrial life on Earth."
"Oh. Wow."
"Yes. Anyway, it was at this time that one of us thought of an option that would ease such a scenario. A sort of ambassador program, or such as your people term it, 'foreign exchange.'"
"Are you taking me to..."
"Yes. Only this time it will be no different. No swimming. Close your eyes; your mind will not abide seeing between dimensions."
"I thought we were just going a short ways."
"Forty billion light years or five miles, the gateway is the same. Anyway, we're here." His hand left hers
The elephant had been standing in little Brian Shears’ living room for as long as he could remember. It was ancient, covered in wrinkles, gouges, and filagree. It always stood in the same spot, swatting its butt with its ratty tail and moving its feet around every few minutes.
Brian’s brother had told him about the elephant when he was smaller, wide-eyed and impressionable. Tony was three years older, and his idol.
“We’re not supposed to talk about it,” Tony had said one day, wearing a grim expression. “It knows...it can tell when people talk about it, and if someone doesn’t stay quiet, it comes into his room at night and gores him to death with those tusks it’s got.”
The tusks on the elephant were sharp, and strangely metallic. Like they were tipped with some special silver or platinum. Some days the tusks even seemed to redden, like with rust – or blood.
Brian had looked up at his brother then, and asked a question.
“Why does it want to hurt us?”
“It’s the only way it can stay alive. If people start talking about it, he’ll disappear.” Brian looked for the hidden smile in Tony’s face, and couldn’t find one. His older brother wasn’t joking.
“I’m scared,” Brian said. He didn’t know if he could stay silent about the great beast down the hall for very long. And if he couldn’t stay silent, the elephant would kill him. It would find him; those long rusty tusks would find him, and pierce him.
Tony had laughed then, a bold, happy thing that masked the obvious unease in his character.
“There’s no need to be afraid. All that is needed is silence. Say nothing and we’ll be all right. I love you, little brother. I’ll keep quiet if you will. Okay?”
Brian saw his brother struggling with the same temptation as he was, the pull to talk. To tell someone. And it scared him. If his older brother couldn’t stay quiet, what hope did he have? Still, he put his hand forward.
“I won’t talk.” He hoped he could keep his own promise. Tony spit into his hand and shook it hard.
That was the last time for a long time that they said anything to each other about the elephant.
The weeks went by and when still the elephant hadn’t moved, Brian’s initial fear at his brother’s warning began to wane. The itch to tell faded. The giant gray beast was still there, but the boy found it easier and easier to ignore it. After about a year, it had sunk to another level in his mind. He could see it, but in a way he didn’t. There was no reason for him to take notice; his life was becoming more hectic by the week. He joined the biology club at his middle school, and made the basketball team. And if things had gone right, he may just have graduated high school and gone away to college without ever having to think about the elephant again.
But things didn’t go right.
If they had, this would not be a story worth telling.
One night his brother was in a rage. He awoke Brian out of a cold slumber and, pulling him out of bed and drilling his face into the carpet, broke his nose.
“You told,” he said.
Blood siphoned onto the floor and his brother stood there idly wringing his hands until the spreading liquid reached toward his feet. Then he was off, padding back into his room as if nothing had happened. Brian lay there fishlike, his mouth opening and closing in mixed disbelief and pain. Finally a choked, miserable sound came from him and after a while his mother came to the door. She was wearing her nightgown, a piece of fabric that was shrinking around her ever-expanding frame, and seemed groggily unaware of anything.
“Brian?” She turned on the light and saw the blood; saw the way the carpet seemed to glisten wetly with new color, and she looked rather like a fish as well. Her eyes grew large and she snorted in horror, but she did not move to help. Brian’s moaning grew louder as he watched, holding his nose and feeling the sticky warm fluid gush through his fingers. Then his mother, finally realizing that her son needed help, dropped to her knees and reached for him.
“My God Brian, you’re bleeding!” The boy moaned louder, and his mother scooted closer, but outside the immediate radius of the saturated area. She pulled his hands away from his face and when his nose became visible she squealed, pounding away from him and down the hall to the phone.
Brian had always wanted to ride in an ambulance. He did it alone.
The next week, after he came home from the hospital, the elephant had designs all over it. When he woke up before very one else in the morning, usually the pain in his face. His mother had taken his pills. He came out into the living room and sat on the register to feel the heat. He'd crouch there looking at the elephant, and consider the designs as it swished its tail indifferently. The hospital had kept him long enough to clean him up and fit him with a nose cast, but fortunately the break was not complete; once healed, there would be no way to notice that it had been broken in the first place. His parents, in the emergency room, had asked him repeatedly how it had happened. Brian told them he’d fallen out of bed. They frowned, dissapointed it wasn’t something more. Something so ordinary should not have gotten them out of bed in the middle of the night. And with work the next morning! They thought the whole situation an inconvenience to their schedules; he saw it on their faces. But he could not tell them the truth; that it had been Tony who had introduced his nose to the floor, not Brian. His brother would never forgive him if he told; brothers did not betray each other. And they did not break oaths.
He was not at school that day; his parents had grudgingly called in to say he was ill. On advice from the doctor who’d set Brian’s nose, of course, not by their own goodwill. The boy had woken up to an empty house, silent but for the ticking hallway clock and the swishing of the elephant’s tail. He’d walked past the elephant nonchalantly on the way to the kitchen, like it was the subconscious thing it had been for years, but then he’d been drawn back. Back to the elephant with ruby tusks and for what seemed like an hour he stared; tracing the ridges in the elephant’s skin as his stomach groaned.
The designs on the elephant’s skin were akin to a maze. They were square, with corners and long paths that would take sudden turns and fold into other ones. The designs were deeply embedded into the leathery surface, and at the very bottom of them were shiny silvery particles, like in the ocean at dawn. Every time the elephant moved, the designs shimmered. Brian found himself unable to look away and at the same time the bright grooves made him nauseous. It made him think of radiation.
Brian shuddered. He didn’t want to think about it. He got up and, although he wasn’t hungry, went to the kitchen to make a sandwich.
His stomach full, Brian returned to the elephant and sat, with his back against the wall above the register, to gaze. Three hours later, when his brother came home from school, he was still there. He was there when the front door slammed and Tony bounded up the steps of the landing. Brian hadn't seem him since before his brother's hands in the dark had smashes his face against the floor. Brian’s attention dropped from the elephant instantly and he scrambled to his feet. But Tony powered by, not giving Brian a glance. Brian stood, heart thudding, and a different door slammed, this time shut.
Brian tiptoed around the elephant, careful not to get too close to its head. When he got to his brother’s door, he put his ear to the white -painted wood. There was no sound to be heard. Brian knocked lightly with his knuckles.
“Tony?” It was the first thing he’d said all day, so Brian’s voice was scratchy and quiet. Also, it had adopted a certain nasal twang due to his fracture. The face cast didn’t help matters. When Tony didn’t answer, Brian tried again. This time, there was an answer.
“GO AWAY!”
It was more of a howl than a command, and yet Brian took two steps away from the door. Gathering strength in his resolve, he stepped back and knocked again, harder this time.
“Tony, I need to ask you something! Open the door! I need to ask you why you think I told - why you think I told about the-”
Tony’s door had opened so fast Brian hadn’t seen it, and now his brother’s hand was resting over his lips. Tony’s head poked out, eyes aflame.
“I told you to never talk about it, remember? You can never talk about it. Now get in here.”
He was pulled into Tony’s room, a living space Brian had seldom seen in recent years. Tony had gotten older, and with his age he developed some teenage sensibilities, like that which restricted access to a place he considered private. The door was locked usually, and plastered with signs suggesting that it would be a very bad idea to enter.There was a key, only one, and that belonged to Tony. He’d had a lock put on the summer of his eighth grade year, after a particularly nasty fight with Brian. Once in a while though, when his brother was feeling charitable, Brian was able to see inside his older brother’s lair. And on certain occasions, he was even permitted to step inside. The interior of Tony’s room had always looked a little barren, the walls blank, the bed made, desk in the corner unused. The first time he’d been allowed in after the lock had been installed, Brian had been a little disappointed. All those hours of speculation on what Tony had in his room that could not be seen, wasted time. He’d imagined walls covered in posters of women in their underwear, shelves lined with action figures and gadgets of all sorts scattered about on the floor. But no; his brother had always been kind of a neatnik, enjoyed cleaning the house and washing the cars. Never had Brian seen anything out of order in his brother’s locked room. Until now.
Tony’s room was completely torn apart. The shades were drawn, and the sunlight glowed a pale yellow through the fabric, highlighting the disarray. Books of every sort were mixed in with papers and clothes that provided a ground cover so complete that Brian had yet to see the carpet. The walls were plastered with images and pages of writing, each held up by a solitary tack through the center. There were photographs of African savannahs, showing families of elephants travelling across the frame. There were hundreds of illustrations of elephants, none very good, all with one similarity. Each drawing had the elephant’s tusks painted a brilliant red color. The color of blood. It was the elephant Brian had been studying earlier, in the living room.
"Oh wow."
"You like them?”
“Yeah, Tony, you're really talented.”
"That's not the point. I do these elephant drawings for you."
"Why"
"It's strong. It's so strong. And I fight it, in here. With these drawings. And it takes so much of my strength to do it, and it changes me, but it's what I need to do to keep you safe."
"But if you want to keep me safe why did you hurt me?"
"I said, all the fighting, all the keeping it at bay, it weakens me. I lash out when I shouldn't."
"Uh huh." Brian said. "But none of that really makes sense. It seems more like you're making it appear."
Tony, eyes gaunt, shook his head. "That elephant is evil, Brian. It wants you dead. I can't let that happen. And you can't get in the way of what I'm doing here. That's what I'm risking if you tell."
"But look what it did to mom. She doesn't even seem to like me or care about me. She's doing my pain pills."
"It's sad about mom. We'll try to help her if we can. But for now you just have to trust me."
"Okay."
"And stop going out to look at it in the morning. It makes what I have to do harder than it needs to be."
"Okay Tony."
"I love you, Brian."
When the neighborhood kids came around to play street hockey and wanted to know if Tony could lace up and come play goalie because he was the best at it out of all the neighborhood kids, Tony told them to take a hike and if they wanted someone they should ask his little brother.
David Molineux let him play and although it wasn't great at it Brian wasn't the liability he expected himself to be. They only let him play goalie. He didn’t stop every goal but there were a few he sent flying back, a tennis ball into the myrtle or someone’s front lawn. By the time the sun was scooping through the trees, he was starting to really get the hang of it. He was sweaty, and he was tired, but he felt like with some more practice he might really fit in with the rest of them. Even if they only really wanted to play with Tony, and not him at all. Even if they were acting more like babysitters than playmates, babysitters who called him names like The Great and Terrible Pee Boy.
When he came home he wanted to tell his brother but the door was locked. There was no light coming in from underneath but if Brian put his ear to the door and listen he could hear study scratching and shallow breathing.
When his mother came home later with some leftovers from her job, she put them on the table and Brian quickly ate all of his portion. Meatloaf, with reheated gelatinous ketchup glazed over the top. “Can I have Tony's too?”
“No, he needs to eat that. Where is he?”
“Haven't seen him. I think he might be in his room."
"Well, go get him. Or I'll be the one eating his leftovers."
When Tony finally opened the door, Brian almost didn't recognize him. He was covered almost head to toe in paint red paint and black ink. Brian thought it was blood at first, but but the paint was thicker and brighter than blood, and it caked his brother’s eyelids and lashes and the ink swirled within, dabbed.
“Out here.”
Brian rushed forward through the gap Tony held open for him and then the door was slammed shut and locked.
It was dark in the room, or darker. Brian couldn’t tell where the walls met the ceiling, or where the floor met the walls. It felt more open, or deeper, or something. The drawings of the reeds of the plants that made up where we were standing…they moved like they were alive. That’s when he noticed they were alive. Not drawings at all. He wasn’t in his brother’s room. He was somewhere deep in a tall grassland, somewhere dark, somewhere extremely hot and damp, and the floor was made of thick smelly mud. The color of red paint, the same color as what Tony had covered himself with. There were pools of black ink, like what Tonly had used to him look like a swath of tall reeds, so he was painted vertically with this black ink. He was completely nude.
“It’ll be able to see you.” he said to me. “You stick out here, you’ll be visible to it, unless you make yourself like me.”
“What are we running from?”
“We aren’t running from it. We’re just trying to exist with it. Exist in a way it doesn’t notice us. When it notices us, that’s when there has to be punishment paid.”
“But what is it?”
Tony’s voice trembled as he whispered the next thing in the dark.
“It’s the elephant.”
“The one in the living room?”
Brian could sense that Tony was nodding yes. He started to get real scared, because presumably in Tony’s room the elephant was elephant sized, not…not the size of a coffee table, non-threateningly lit with high hum fluorescent bulbs.
Carolyn didn't know what about the bus made her think of Scooby Doo, because it wasn't green and purple. It was light blue with dark blue doors, and the shape was even wrong. That didn't stop her from thinking about the cartoon show every time she drove past, and it didn't help that she could never get a clean look at the driver - he was always looking down at his phone or directions or something. It bothered her momentarily, always, but then she’d return to a conversation with a friend or get back to her book.
Maybe she thought of Scooby Doo because the bus looked suspicious and she wondered about it every time she saw it. The van was her own mystery machine.
The next week she had a doctor’s appointment, so she had to alter her weekly routine. She left earlier from work at lunch time and seemed to pass the Scooby Doo bus at the same time every day, at the same intersection. Always she’d think of the cartoon show, always the driver would have his head down.
A week after her appointments she went back to her normal schedule, leaving for lunch when it made sense after her morning phone calls. She didn’t see the bus until Wednesday, when inexplicably to match up with her new schedule the bus was there again, passing her on the corner where it had all the previous week. She felt a chill in her chest but played it off as a coincidence.
The next day it passed her again at the newly scheduled time. Carolyn got really scared, because this time at the intersection the bus seemed to take extra long to come out of the four way stop. Even with his head down Carolyn felt like the driver was staring right at her.
This is when she first notices the bus.
The bus: MC passes on the way home from work every day.
MC's work schedule changes, doesn't see the bus for a while
Then one day, the bus's schedule matches hers again.
She follows it up to the lake.
At the lake she watches the driver get out. She follows him but then notices the van keeps driving.
The first time she follows the man; the next time the van.
The second time she follows the van the driver gets out again, and the van keeps driving again.
She keeps following the van.
She follows it to her house. It parks in her driveway.
A man gets out and walks up to her door, and uses a key under her mat to get in.
She gets in the Scooby Doo van. What does she want? Info? A weapon? How can this story end?
Inside the van there's a portal floor.
The driver climbs up into it to get her.
I remember it was September of last year because the Public Market was still going, and there was this table selling gourmet caramels, some Irish last name, and the taste I couldn’t get out of my head from the assortment I’d greedily bought up was the Rosemary flavor. It was smooth, and melted on your tastebuds with the added bent of a Rosemary spice. And when I met her around the same time and her name was Rosemary, every time I looked at her I tasted those caramels. I was in Boston for a book signing, which would have been a nice memory but for the fact that as an author I was widely unknown, and as such, widely unread.
Rosemary would have laughed at me saying that. Or maybe I’m ascribing more personality to her than I witnessed, but she seemed like someone who would laugh at an author being disappointed with his readership. “You’re an author,” maybe she’d say. “Isn’t that enough? You’re in rare air.”
It didn’t feel rare. And that September, with the memory of those caramels and the cold Boston air, I came in from a day’s walk along the Charles River, which I’d learned had been named by King George’s kid Charlie pointing his chubby fingers at a squiggly line on a map, and found Rosemary huddled on one side of a love seat in the hotel lobby, her hands battling each other in her lap. Normally I’d stroll on by, leaving preoccupied women be, but I’d been sipping a nip of whiskey as I walked and felt a daring in myself. In this state I’d been known to read odd things into a microphone, criticize the service at a restaurant, talk to strangers in the bathroom, and approach women sitting alone in anguish to offer my presence.
A Note To The Reader:
Peter Fogg was fifty-seven when he disappeared from the streets of Chicago on March 15, 2002. He was a lawyer in the court system, working in a firm that dealt with wrongful death cases and represented accident victims, and after he left his house that morning he was never seen again. After his missing persons case was closed and the courts presumed him dead, the contents of a safe deposit box in his name were turned over to his wife and fifteen-year-old son. Among the items in the box was a fifty-page memoir, handwritten in blue pen on yellow legal paper, and it was this memoir which Mr. Fogg's son handed to me no more than three months ago. Having read it several times over the years since, he thought it unique in context and content, and I agreed.
As far as being a true story, I've done extensive research on the people and places mentioned within, and most of them check out. Okego Falls was in fact a small town in Nebraska until twenty-five years ago, when it was absorbed into the greater suburbs of Omaha, and though I've found no newspaper mention of any Wheelbarrow Man in or around that area during the time in which the account takes place, I still have no reason to believe what Mr. Fogg wrote was a work of fiction. What follows is that same story, and excepting some revision for clarity and the filling in of a few small gaps, this is the story he meant to tell.
Adam Holwerda, February 13th, 2009
When the old man and his wheelbarrow began their first slow trips down the streets of my childhood town, people began to talk. It was autumn, newly so, and the residents of Okego Falls Nebraska had little else to occupy them as 1956 marched toward its end. Narrowed eyes watched him through shuttered windows and from behind closed blinds. Pedestrians kept their distance, and spoke in hushed voices after he'd passed them by. Rumors spread like whispering wildfire: the Wheelbarrow Man was a hitch-hiker from Jackson, where the prison was, or he’d come from the mental institution up in Hyatt. Uneasy proclamations about a man too old and broke to be much more than homeless. Maybe some of them tried talking to him, in questions, but the answers he gave very obviously did not satisfy. So the business with the homeless man stayed open. The questions stayed questions, and maybe that bothered the Falls folk so much they had no choice but to stop talking. The rumors were replaced by a watchful unease. It was like that for almost two weeks until, like an unspoken agreement, the people of my town did their best to ignore him. For the most part.
I was twelve, smallest of the boys in my sixth-grade class, and more or less unnoticed. My mother and I lived in a blue box-house with a rusted screen door and a lawn the color of old paper, and instead of sports I spent my time with books and daydreams. I had no friends of the type that wanted to visit after school, and I think that was one of the things that worried her the most. Worrying about me, for my mother, was her first and often only priority. I think she was truly afraid I'd turn out wrong if she gave it up for even a minute, that I'd turn out like my father.
Every Sunday she made sure I went to church and what she called Catechism, which is what me and all the other Catholic kids I saw there called Sunday school, so I could get my religion and some form of interaction with the outside world. It was the best she could do. It's only now, looking back, that I wonder. If any one thing had been different, if my mother had chosen to enroll me in music lessons instead, or encouraged me to join an after-school club, if things would have turned out better. As it is, her choice was church, and I suppose that's the reason it all happened just how it did.
Mass was as bad as it sounded; a mass of sweaty, coughing bodies huddled together in stinking rows of poorly-masked flatulence and bad breath. All the while a man in long robes spoke urgently about ideas like sin and redemption. The services always left me feeling drained and hopeless afterwards, because I couldn't imagine anyone getting into heaven or attaining eternal life with all those rules. I certainly couldn't see a camel getting through the eye of a needle, and anyway that kind of talk always made me think of a camel getting a needle in the eye, which I felt was much more likely.
It went on like that for two hours, but I was lucky since Sunday school started halfway through, when all the kids got ushered out of their seats and back into a little room full of candles while the adults stayed for communion and more singing. And during the transfer, I'd put myself on the end of the line of well-dressed children and wait till we passed the doors. Then I'd open one halfway and duck out. No one noticed until one Sunday, the third one following the introduction of the Wheelbarrow Man to the Falls. The day I met him.
Like usual, I sat on the curb and watched whatever was going on up the street. The week before I had watched the Millers paint their house, so the scope of my expectations wasn’t very large. A few cars drove by, people from out of town just come in to use the pumps up at the corner, no one I knew. After a while I closed my eyes and let the morning sun heat my freckled arms, and started dozing off.
A voice, raspy and weak, like the sound leather made when it was sanded, woke me up.
“You there, boy. Do you think they’d let me in there if I wanted to?”
I blinked twice to clear my eyes and looked around. The Wheelbarrow Man was standing off to my left on the road, looking at me. My mother, who had plenty to say about everything, hadn’t left the man in front of me out of her daily warnings. “If you find yourself near that man without a proper adult with you for protection, I want you to run the other way. I hear a lot about him, and there isn’t one thing good. Besides, just the way he looks makes me nervous. And your mother is the best judge of character around, Peter, you’d best remember that.”
But that morning, standing there gripping the handles of his wheelbarrow, the stranger didn’t look like any homeless or drunk I’d ever seen. His cheeks were bare and smooth, and his skin didn’t wrinkle or fold over anywhere. His eyes were a bright silvery blue. The Wheelbarrow Man’s hair was long, coming down in straight white parts that hung against his face, and he wore slacks and an old brown coat.
I looked at him for about half a minute, which is a long time even when you’ve been woken up. My mouth didn’t want to unglue itself, to give an answer that might be wrong. But he kept looking at me, patiently waiting for an answer, strong hands tight on the wheelbarrow. It was covered with a tarp, and secured with two bungee cords hooked together at the head just under the lip. There was no hope of seeing inside.
“Well, I suppose...” My voice was quiet, and the words scratched my vocal chords on their way out. “I suppose you could.”
“Would they let me take it in?” The wheelbarrow.
“They’d probably make you leave it outside,” I said.
He chuckled.
“I’d better be on my way, then. What’s your name, boy?”
“Peter.” I’d said it before I had a chance to think on whether or not telling this man my name was a smart thing. Suppose he was a kidnapper? Mother had always worried extensively about those.
The man burst out laughing.
“A coincidence to be sure! Pleased to meet, sir Peter! That is my name as well.” He took a hand from the wheelbarrow’s grip and sent it toward me. I shook it, surprised to see my hand drowning in his. Then he withdrew, and was once again pushing his tarp-covered wheelbarrow up the street. He looked over his shoulder at me and hollered.
“Be sure to let me know if they’re ever doing Mass outdoors!”
I don’t remember if I said anything back. I don’t think I did.
Only a short while after the Wheelbarrow Man left me that day, Mass let out and I’d forgotten to get into position by the door of the classroom. My mother came out to wait for me and there I was, sitting on the curb like an imbecile. She pulled me to my feet by the ear and we walked home. She didn’t say anything and I didn’t tell her I’d talked to the Wheelbarrow Man. Skipping out on Sunday school was bad enough.
For half a month I forgot about the Wheelbarrow Man; my mother said nothing in his regards and I never saw him. One Tuesday after school, however, I had my hair cut in Hap’s barber shop, the one downtown, on Linden. Of course, it’s not there anymore. Not much from back then is. Hap was cutting my hair this time, I remember that. Usually he didn’t bother with the kids; kids were for the apprentices, practice for those still learning. But no one else was in that afternoon, and so he started on me, asking all the questions you ask to a kid you see every now and then. Then, as my head tipped back into the rinse-bucket, the questions stopped.
“Ah, Christ,” Hap muttered. He was looking out the shop window. I had to see. I lifted my head. Walking on the other side of the street was the Wheelbarrow Man. But something about him was changed. No; it was the wheelbarrow. There were objects attached to it. Pieces of metal, bits of old chairs and other wooden artifacts, cloth and tarps; all rising up from the sides like makeshift teeth. Something about it made my stomach drop, and then I couldn’t stop smiling. It was beautiful, you have to understand. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Put your head back down, boy. You’re gettin' my floor all wet.” I let my head drop. “Don’t know why you’re smiling - that man’s trouble. Won’t be long and someone’ll be dead and I’ll be dealing out the ‘told you so’s.’” That took the smile off my face.
“Dead?”
“Well, I ain’t sayin’ anything…just got a feelin’ that don’t feel so right. You saw what he’s building…up on that thing, didn’t you? Man’s crazy, and crazy folk sometimes get violent.”
The wheelbarrow man hadn’t seemed crazy when he talked to me, but maybe that was the way with crazy people. “Did you talk to him, Mr. Hap?”
“Sure didn’t. But I got people tellin’ me stories, and I told Mark Hubbard and he’s got a special eye on that man now…all the better. Sooner or later he’s going to do somethin’ a little screwy and that’ll be it for him. And won’t everyone thank me that he’s gone.”
Mark Hubbard was the Sheriff’s deputy. I didn’t know much about him until later - he was a good cop, good at his job, and became Sheriff when Sheriff Hooper was shot in the line of duty on a domestic violence house call some five years after the summer of the Wheelbarrow Man.
I thought about him all night, and my mother got home late from work so I just pretended to sleep because I knew that if I started talking to her she’d get out of me what I was thinking and would tell me to quit.
I packed my own lunch in the morning, and went to school. Whatever we went over in class was lost on me - the only thing I remember about it was being grateful the teacher never called on me, because I couldn’t much concentrate. At lunch break I went outside with all the other kids to eat my lunch, but when they went back in I took a walk. I walked down High Street seven blocks, looking down side streets as I went, and finally found him.
He was pushing it past the corner store, and then the ice cream shop and drug store. I walked up, unsure of what to say. So I didn’t say anything, and when he saw me he nodded and I nodded back, and we walked together like that for a block or two. From so close, the structure on the wheelbarrow was intricate and detailed, and I didn’t see what held it together. No nails, or glue - everything just seemed to balance there.
He was the first of us to speak.
“Skipping school, Peter?”
“No, uh.” I coughed, and spit out the lie. “It was a half day.”
He looked at me and smiled. “Of course.”
I watched my feet for the next few moments, then blurted, “They say you’re going to kill someone.”
“They say that.”
“You’re not, though, right?”
He didn’t say anything. He stared straightaway, right into his wheelbarrow, and kept pushing. Then he looked at me.
“You don’t think so.”
“No.” I nodded at the wheelbarrow. “It’s beautiful. Nobody crazy could put something like that together.”
He stopped pushing, then stepped back and put his hands on his hips. For a moment something like pride flickered across his face.
“So. You can see it.”
“Sure, mister. Everyone can see it, they talk about it all the time.” I didn’t say that they talked more about him.
He started pushing again, and didn’t look at me.
“That’s not what I meant, Peter.”
“Oh.” A moment passed in silence.
“You know, people see what they want to, and around here it seems like they want to be afraid of something. Around most places, but here especially. Some people though, can’t help but see what’s actually there. You and me, we’re two of those. I hope you don’t turn into one of the others.”
“Me either.” I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“You better get along, now. Your mother is going to know you talked to me one way or another, but it’ll be better for you and me if it was only for a short time.”
I took a few more steps, and then stopped. “I’ll see you again.”
He didn’t look back.
The spanking I got that night was worse than any I’d ever had, and even though I was twelve and shouldn’t have, I cried. The only thing that made it better was thinking about the wheelbarrow, only when I thought about it it wasn’t a wheelbarrow at all. It was a machine: a dream machine.
Being that our town was small, the next day at school everyone knew where I’d gone and what I’d done after lunch. It was, of course, the the clerk at the counter of the corner story and the soda jerk who had called my mother and told her what they’d seen, and then spread the news along to everyone who came in.
I was an instant celebrity. Everyone wanted to know about the Wheelbarrow Man, wanted to know if what they’d heard was true. I got called in to Principal Davis' office just before lunch and he told me they’d be watching and that while he couldn’t do anything while I wasn’t the school’s responsibility, someone would stop me and call my mother if I tried to leave at lunch again. He was trying to put fear into me, and I saw it, but it wouldn’t have mattered: there was no way I was stupid enough to do the same thing twice. So I told him what he wanted to hear and promised I’d be good.
Besides, I said, it was pizza day.
I waited a week before trying to see the Wheelbarrow Man again. It wasn’t easy for me, because while everyone seemed fairly convinced that I’d learned my lesson and that my behavior wouldn’t be repeated, the suspicion surrounding the vagrant’s continued presence in town (or lack thereof) was strengthening. From what I heard (not from my mother - she knew better than to spark my interest by bringing him up) it became clear that Peter had stopped doing two of the only things the people of Okego Falls had grown used to. First, he’d stopped pushing the wheelbarrow. Instead, it was now parked in the middle of an empty lot at the end of one of the old streets, across from where the old mermaid fountain was. The land had belonged to a family of migrant workers a few years before, but their house had burned down and they’d moved on. It was a dead part of town, and though people were just as fervent in their convictions to ignore the Wheelbarrow Man, now I started to hear a bit of curiosity in their voices. Because, the other thing the Wheelbarrow Man had stopped doing was he quit showing up. He simply didn’t seem to be around anymore.
“I’d have thought he was gone, and that he left that thing there for good,” the Sunday school teacher said to us that weekend, “but it seems like every morning I look down that road and some new contraption or doodad has been added to it.” She sounded afraid, and I felt like I knew why. It was easy to ignore something you could see, and harder to be unafraid of a man who no one could see and yet continued to do his work right in front of them.
“I swear,” she said, but then quickly put a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I mean to say, it’s getting so big now you can’t even see that wheelbarrow anymore.” Then, seeing the looks on our faces, and especially mine, she hooked a big fingernail at each of us in turn. “But if I find out you’re so much as thinking about going to see it without your parents approval, Heaven help you.” It wasn’t much of a threat, coming from her, but it seemed enough to deter everyone else.
That Tuesday night I waited an hour past my mother’s usual bedtime before tiptoeing down from my room. I’d prepared myself well, I thought, dressing in all darks and completing the look with a black pair of my mother’s pantyhose drawn snug over my face. If people saw me tonight, they might know I was a kid, but none of them would be able to prove it was me. I wasn’t going to get caught again. One of the things I remember most vividly from that night was how loud the front door was when I opened it. The click it made when I unlocked it and the creak that followed had me convinced that my mother was now awake and would be out in just a minute to let me know just how she felt about what I had done to her pantyhose. I waited, but there was no movement. I stepped through the door and closed it, hearing the same loud click and hoping to God this one didn’t wake her. I didn’t wait to find out, and started my mission of stealth with a sprint down the street.
Even in the dark it was magnificent, a tower of items that no longer mattered outside of their current context. It was so tall, its base so girthsome, that the wheelbarrow that had served as the foundation was indeed no longer visible. Instead, it met the ground via a lawnmower and a mailbox and a birdbath, as well as several desks and a ladder. It dawns on me now that I should have had a harder time seeing it, as the streetlights on that road were much further down. Perhaps it was giving off a kind of light of its own, or the moon was. I can’t remember. I do remember calling for the Wheelbarrow Man, my breathless cries of “Peter?” echoing gently into the tower and out again. The echoes led me to the hole in the side of the thing.
There, at the place where the tower met the earth, between a truck tire and the remains of an old brick fireplace, was a round opening, big enough for a man of his size at least to go through. Of course, I thought, He lives in there. Like a hermit crab. And so I stuck my head down into the hole and yelled, “Peter? Mister...Peter, sir?” There was no answer. I crawled in.
It wasn’t as dark as I’d thought. Maybe some of that glow I thought I’d seen on the outside of it was coming from in here, too. Things stuck out at me, pulled at my clothes as I skittered past, but I didn’t bother to try and see what they were. Because once I got all the way in, once I made myself call for Peter once again, it got real cold. Like one of those walk-in freezers. It scared me. I cried out and closed my eyes, and crawled faster, half expecting to run my face into a desk or a car door. But that didn’t happen, and the cold didn’t last, and I opened my eyes again. In front of me, there was a box of light. Bright, like the sun. I crawled toward it, and then out of it.
I know what it sounds like now, but I don’t know if I care. What happened was, I crawled into a pile of junk in Okego Falls in the middle of the night, and crawled out of a pile of junk...somewhere else, in daylight. A garden.
The grass under my knees was spongy and warm, and I could hear the burble of a nearby stream, as well as the singing of many colorful birds; some of which swooped and tumbled through the air in front of me, from a tree bearing golden fruit to a bright purple bush to a perch high up on something very familiar looking. Another junk tower.
In fact, as I pulled the pantyhose from my face I started to see them all over the place. Tower after tower, more spread out and distant, but I began to understand that this place was much bigger than the lot I'd come from, or from the town even. I stood up and felt the heat of the sun on me, on my black clothes. I began to walk gingerly on the spongy grass, looking. What I remember most was the color. Like my eyes were never meant to be so stimulated, so...I mean, it almost hurt to keep them open. But they wouldn’t close.
Flowers of every size and hue, growing from the grass and from trunks of trees, almost, it seemed, growing out of other flowers. All put there in a way you’d swear someone planned it but no, it was just the way they grew. Like this for miles, hilly miles that housed several streams, a waterfall, and what looked like a forest of similar-looking fruit trees with different kinds of fruit. Nothing that looked like anything I’d actually ever eaten, though.
And then there were the towers. These had been planned, obviously, and some of them looked ancient. Made up of the kind of things the Wheelbarrow Man had been making the tower in then Falls with, but none of it really looked familiar. Junk, yes, but foreign junk. Different junk. I could look at the tower back home and tell you what it was made of, and what each thing it was made of was used for, and where he’d probably gotten that thing to begin with. These others...I didn’t know. And, for the most part, I don’t feel like there’s any way I could describe them anyway. I don’t feel like I’ve been able to describe any of it, of the garden Peter called Aden. Not now, even with my memory so full. What it feels like now is flailing with words, and maybe they touch what I mean sometimes, and maybe sometimes they stick, but mostly they just slide off.
Words weren’t made to describe that place.
He found me stumbling around, looking most probably like a patient in a mental ward. Clad only in underpants after I'd stripped the hot black clothes from my body, and wide eyed. Like I was looking at everything all at once, and each separate thing for a hundred years. And if he hadn’t found me I wonder if I wouldn’t still be there, a forty-three-year-old-man with the mind of a twelve-year-old boy, wandering that garden and eating fruit whenever the hunger touched me.
It was his hand on my shoulder, then his voice.
“Peter?” I’d all but forgotten why I’d come in the first place, that I’d been looking for him.
I looked up into the face of the Wheelbarrow Man. He looked older here, wrinklier, weaker. A sad concern marked his eyes. “Peter, what are you doing here?” Was he angry?
“I...I wanted to see...”
“Did anyone see you come? Did anyone see you pass through?” I stared, dazed. My skin was roasting under the sun, and his hand on my shoulder was cool. “Peter, did anyone see you?” Finally, I shook my head.
“No, it was dark. I was...no one saw.”
He took his hand from me. “I thought I was the only one.”
He looked away. I thought of something, then. “Mister...Peter, is this your home?”
“This?” The Wheelbarrow Man laughed. “No, no. It’s not. Home.” His voice cracked when he said the word. I didn’t say anything, because after a moment he started up again. “It’s the in-between. The origin, the place you have to go through to get anywhere else. It’s not home, no, because all I ever do is try to go home. I can’t.”
“I don’t understand.”
“And I never thought I’d have to explain it to anyone. When I met you I thought you were different, but not like this. Not like me, because there is no one like me.”
I just stared at him some more. He finally gave in to my confusion and and bit his lower lip. “Here, let’s go sit.” We walked to a stream and sat beside it on a large plate of rock. I put my feet in the water.
“The first time I came here it was an accident. Like it was for you, only when I got here I was alone. It was just the garden and I. It was accident because I didn’t know what I was doing when I built the first door. I was fooling around in my backyard, after my wife left me, putting things together some random way. Things I didn’t care about anymore. A sculpture, I thought. A monument to my failed life. It was how I struck back at everything, at my wife for leaving and at the world for making me into the failure I thought I was. And maybe it was just me, but I think something else was helping me build. Something that wanted me to break the rules. I worked all day, all night, and all the next day. I didn’t eat, or sleep. I finished sometime in the late evening, and my body ached and all I wanted to do was lay down and give my body up to dreams, or no dreams, whatever was in the cards.
“I didn’t feel like going back in the house so I just crawled into my junk sculpture. And maybe I thought I was dreaming, but I knew I wasn’t. The same part of me that wanted to break the rules was also dead sure this place was real. Real or not, I did end up sleeping.
“When I woke up again, and the sun was in the same spot in the sky, and the garden was still here and my house and my neighborhood was gone, I got scared. I knew it was real, so I started to think that I’d worked myself to death and this was whatever came after. Only after a while that felt wrong. I don’t know how long it was before I started building another one to get me back - time is all weird here.”
I watched a turquoise bird with red-tipped feathers peck at the stream, pulling from it a wriggling minnow before taking flight again.
“Where is here?”
“I used to think it was the fabled Garden of Aden.” That was how he said it, not Eden, and it wasn’t his accent. The man spoke like an American just like everyone I grew up listening to. “God’s starting point. And when Adan and Eve were made to leave, he just, I don’t know, made everything else. All the other worlds. And they had to start over.” Adan instead of Adam. It was strange, but it made sense. Peter wasn’t from my world. He’d just never gotten back to his own. “Anyway, that was what I used to think, back when I loved it here. Before it became Hell.” He shook his head, eyes closed tight, lips drawn into tight lines. I let the silence grow, and then he chopped it down again.
“You see, it might not have been so bad, if she’d left me for good. But she was coming back. My Penelope, she was pregnant. I was going to be a father. And every minute I pass in this place, or another place that’s not my home, she and my daughter grow older, believing all the time that I'm dead. We have a story where I come from, told by a man named Omar, about a great warrior king named Odd who travels across the sea to do battle with a rival country. Only when he is done there, he angers the sea gods with his pride and the return journey takes him seven years. Already I have tripled that amount. Have you heard the tale, Peter? Of Odd and Sea?”
I nodded. I had, sort of.
He gestured out at the garden. No, he was pointing at the towers of junk. “Every time I build one, I pray to God it is the road home. And that hope breaks a little more each time. I don't even have to look anymore. I can tell by how the people see me that I'm different. Foreign. Every time I’m wrong, I have to build another one to take me back here.”
I regarded him, this sad man, and realized all of a sudden what he meant. I panicked.
“Peter, I - am I stuck here too? Like you? What about my mother, my-”
He quieted me with a wave of his hand. “No, no, of course you’re not stuck here. I’ve already built doors that go both to and from your world. The last tower I built dropped me in the middle of the empty lot where I put the wheelbarrow. I wanted to be able to come and go, you see, using only that one gate.”
I was relieved. Of course, if I’d only thought of it for a second, I’d have come to the answer. Still, the doubt was there like a brick in my gut. Part of me was still sure I’d be trapped in the Garden of Aden. Part of me even probably wanted to to.
“Why are you still using it? The gate?”
He looked at me like I'd asked him why he was still breathing.
“To get more. More to build with. I haven’t given up, not yet. I’ll build until I go home or until I die. I don’t imagine they’re that much different. I could build with what I have here, as well as the sticks and grasses I was forced to build my second tower from, but it’s much easier using actual junk from a fresh site. I’m not sure why. It’s something in my head, or my heart that lets me do it. The gateways.”
My head too? My heart? He seemed to know what I was thinking.
“You’d be smart to heed my lesson, Peter, and stay away from here. It felt like breaking the rules because it was. We’re not meant to be here. This is God’s place.”
I nodded.
“Now, you ought to be going back. Too much time here will start to warp you. Maybe it already has.”
I didn’t want to leave, but I thought he was right. I felt different. Older. I might have been in shock.
The Wheelbarrow Man (only I thought of him more and more as Peter, just Peter) led me to one of the foreign-looking towers. Not the one I’d crawled out of. I bent down and stuck my head into the hole. I looked back.
“Peter?”
“Yes?”
“When you leave, when you’re done with your next tower, can you - can you say goodbye?”
The old man smiled.
“You bet.”
And I crawled in. The same cold thing happened, and this time it was worse, because I didn’t have any clothes on. Also, because as I tumbled out of the tower in the empty lot in Okego Falls in just my underwear, I was met with the sound of screaming and the bright beams of what seemed to be a dozen flashlights. I thought I recognized the screaming. Mom. I must have woken her up after all.
“OH MY GOD MY BOY’S BEEN...HE’S BEEN--”
I pulled my head through the dirt to see her, to see...all of them, standing there bathing in the glow of the tower. It looked like the whole town was there. As my mother rushed toward me, tears streaming down her face, I saw Hap and the church priest, the Sunday school teacher and the soda jerk, Mark Hubbard the sheriff’s deputy, Principal Davis, and a whole heck of a lot more, just staring.
She took hold of my arms and dragged me away from the tower before shaking me like an etch-a-sketch. “What the hell were you doing, mister?”
“I was just in there,” I said, pointing. And my mother burst out in tears once again.
“I saw you go in there. I followed you. But then you weren’t in there! There’s nothing in there! I called the police, I called everyone I knew. Where did he take you? What did he do to you? Did he...did he touch you, Peter?”
“Peter didn’t...” I said, but my mother didn’t understand. “You’re in shock,” she said. “Don’t worry, we’ll get the scumbag.” I opened my mouth again but she didn’t wait. “Deputy Hubbard! He must be in there, you had better get him out, or I’ll have your job.”
The Deputy nodded curtly. “Yes ma’am.” Then he strode up to the hole where I’d emerged. “Sir, this is the Police! I’m going to have to ask you to remove yourself from this structure or I’ll have to remove you by force. Is that understood. Sir?”
He pulled his head back out. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone in there, ma’am.”
“Well don’t just stand there, you big idiot, go in there and remove him by force like you said you would!”
Deputy Hubbard rolled his eyes. “Yes ma’am.”
Then he hunched his shoulders and prepared to throw his bulk into the hole.
“No need for that, officer. I’m coming out.” Peter's voice, from the opening. Deputy Hubbard started, then stood there looking bewildered as the man with the silver hair popped legs first from the hole and stood before us all. He was holding my clothes in his hands. He’d been coming to give them back to me.
The crowd, which had been silently staring until now, began to rustle. I could hear them saying things amongst themselves, bad things. A boy in his underpants and an old man with the boy’s clothes. It didn’t look good.
Peter fixed me with a sympathetic look, and pointed at the priest. “So you finally got them to do mass outside, eh, Pete?”
I looked down as my mother screeched at him. “Don’t you dare speak to my boy!” Then to Deputy Hubbard, “Why aren’t you arresting him?!”
“Oh, right.” The Deputy stepped forward, pulling handcuffs from his belt. “Sir, you are under arrest for kidnapping and suspicion of child molestation. You have the right to remain silent; anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one may be appointed to you.”
Peter said nothing, and the metal halves of the handcuffs closed around his wrists.
Tell them the truth! I yelled at him in my mind, and he just looked at me and gave me a wan smile. They see what they want to see.
“He didn’t do anything!” I tried to yell, but my mother hushed me.
The rest of it happened all too fast. The crowd had become a mob, shouting “Molester!” and “Kill him!” and “You’ll burn in Hell for what you’ve done!” A moment later a glass bottle exploded against the tower, and the place where it had struck became engulfed in flames. “BURN IT!” they yelled, “BURN IT DOWN!” More fiery bottles were thrown against it, and soon it was a towering inferno. I saw Hap giving the bottles out, lighting the bits of fabric he’d shoved inside them as he did. I started screaming then, but I was drowned out by the shouts of “BURN IT!” and “KILL HIM!” that had become deafening chants.
In the confusion, Deputy Hubbard had left Peter’s side and was trying to stop the bottle-throwing. So when the Wheelbarrow Man walked toward the flames, no one attempted to stop him. He winked at me and bent down, and as he crawled back into the hole that took him inside the tower, the hole that was now glowing red like an incinerator, the chants dissipated and finally stopped. Once he was all the way in, they simply stared. No one moved to pull him out, not even Deputy Hubbard.
And so I watched beauty burn and die, and there wasn’t a thing I was able to do about it.
The burning ended sometime around six in the morning, and the volunteer firefighters started to pick it apart.
By then, my mother had already taken me home, put me in the bath, and called a therapist. My “cycle of healing” was about to begin, no matter how many times I tried to tell my mother what had really happened. I had proof, too, because kids don’t get sunburned in the middle of the night, but it didn’t matter. In her eyes I was a damaged child, victim of some crazy man’s sexual deviance. I remember wishing, over and over, that I had kept my clothes on when I was in the other world. If I had only done that...but I hadn’t. It was too much guilt for a twelve-year-old, and so I took the therapy and used it to mourn a friend instead of trying to convince another adult of the truth.
In the years that followed, Wheelbarrow Man was a phrase seldom spoken, and then only in the softest of tones by the closest of companions. The people of Okego Falls moved on, but to say they soon forgot what happened would be equal to saying that gnomes and fairies built all of NASA’s rockets. They didn’t. I was regarded as the victim of a tragedy, and I was, but not the one they imagined. I was also the recipient of a great blessing, a vision of something truly beautiful.
I visited that other world often then, just as I do almost every night now, in the deepest of my dreams. I dream of the Wheelbarrow Man, only in my dreams he is just another Peter, trying to get home. Sometimes I dream he makes it through the flames to be sheltered in the cold between worlds. That he builds one more tower, and comes through the last gate in time to fill the waiting arms of his wife, and kiss the daughter he’d never met. Who knows, maybe it really did happen that way.
They only ever found the handcuffs, you see. Each side unlocked and hanging open, cool to the touch and looking like they’d ridden out the blaze somewhere green, somewhere with plenty of flowers and songbirds. And that has always been good enough for me.
Peter Fogg, February 21st, 2002