CHIPPERONI

During the summer of my eleventh year, my parents separated.

My mother took us kids, and we moved into a small one bedroom cottage on a lot which held three others.

One was occupied by a childless couple, uninterested in someone my age. In another was a guy in his late twenties, although I could be wrong. When you’re a kid, everyone just seems old.

He almost never came home till late at night. We always heard because he rode a motorcycle and was frequently drunk. I think it pained my mother because at those times he sounded like my father, but it comforted me in a perverse way because I missed him so much. Looking back, he probably didn’t sound like dad at all, but the breakup was fresh, and you know how that goes. My mother didn’t trust him because he wore a leather jacket and seemed ‘coarse.’ I thought he was cool and dangerous, and I always peeked out the window when he roared up.

The only other neighbor sharing our little courtyard that summer to whom I spoke was Mary. She was ninety-nine years old, but I didn’t know that then. My mother helped with her grocery shopping, and was apparently the first person, other than an occasional repairman, whom Mary had invited inside her house since she moved there forty years before.

I was the last person she invited in, if you could call it that. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

What little personal information we knew of her we learned one day when the landlord came by to pick up the rent, and was amazed to see my mother exiting Mary’s house. He asked all kinds of questions, most of which my mother had no answers for. He hadn’t set foot in her place since he bought the property, he said, and Mary had lived there for ten years by then. “Grandmothered in,” he said, and laughed. She came with the property.

 I have no idea why Mary picked my mother to finally invite the outside world into her home. At the time I thought it was because mom was one of those people who seemed to adapt to whomever she was with. Except for my father, she got along well with everyone. Or maybe Mary just finally got too frail to carry her own groceries.

Whatever the reason, my mother escorted Mary to and from the market once a week that summer, put away her groceries, and rarely had a conversation of any consequence whatsoever.

I think it was more than compassion, or even pity, which caused my mother to expend as much effort as Mary would allow her to make the old woman’s life more comfortable. Although we never spoke of it, then or since, I suspect mom was afraid she might end up like Mary. Fear is a powerful motivator, and since my father was not amenable to reconciliation, Mary offered a course of action which was both constructive and time consuming.

Consuming time is of great importance. There is rarely enough and often too much. But consume it you must.

Since my mother was always less melancholy after her weekly errand, I didn’t begrudge her the time away, and was grateful for its effects.

I was the eldest child, and it was my responsibility to walk my brothers to their elementary school for the summer program, and meet them outside in the afternoon. My mother, who worked full time, would often return home hours after we’d gotten back.

All my friends lived across town where my dad was, so this was my summer of solitude.

One evening towards the end of the summer, after feeding my brothers, I heard a strange noise from the direction of Mary’s house. It was hot, and the sound carried easily through the still summer night. The married couple were the only ones in the court with an air conditioner, which droned constantly every evening as soon as they came home, but it was silent tonight.

I had opened all the windows, against my mother’s wishes. She didn’t like me to do that till she got home, but I was almost twelve. I could take care of things. Had I obeyed my mother on that point, it’s possible Mary would have lived to see her hundredth birthday.

I stood at the window, and listened more closely. For a while there was nothing, and then I heard it again. Kind of like crying. And it was definitely coming from Mary’s.

I thought of calling mom at work, but she had gotten in trouble when dad called several times her first day there, so that was only for emergencies.

I shut all the windows, and told my brothers to stay in the bedroom and watch TV. We only had the one, and the rabbit ears got better reception in there for some reason. I got the spare key from the hook in the kitchen, and locked the door behind me.

It was a lot nicer outside, and the grass was dewy and cool on my feet. I don’t know why, but I tip-toed towards her house, as if I was doing something wrong and needed to sneak around.

When I got to her bedroom window, I could hear her whimpering.

“Mary?” The whimpering stopped. And then it started again, a little louder. But now it sounded like muffled words.

The window was open but the screen was nailed in place, and her curtains were drawn. I looked around. The cottages were all dark except for the erratic light from whatever TV show my brothers were watching. I ran to the street, and realized I knew absolutely no one in the entire neighborhood by name except for Mary.

Adrenaline rushed through me as I imagined the old woman bound and gagged.

Like in a dream, I ran back up the courtyard and onto Mary’s porch. To my surprise, the door was unlocked, and I went in.

It was dark and spooky inside, and my pace slowed as much as my heart sped up. I could hear her whimpers grow louder. When you’ve lived in a place as long as she, I guess you know right away if someone else was in the house.

It wasn’t until that moment the thought struck me, “What if someone else is in here?”

Like the person who tied her up.

I almost turned and ran back out the door, but then I heard something that not only chilled my blood, but drew me inexorably into that bedroom. 

“Kill me!”

It was Mary’s voice. It had to be. I froze. I had no idea what to do. I listened as hard as I’ve ever listened in my life. I closed my eyes so tight to listen my head pounded, until I realized I wouldn’t see anyone if they came after me. I opened my eyes and then I could see a little better in the dark, so I took a tentative step towards the back of the house.

A creak in the floor nearly caused my heart to stop, but I took another step forward, mainly to get off that board.

I walked towards her bedroom door, which was half open. A faint glow crept past its edge.

I peered around the door, and I will never forget what I saw as long as I live.

Mary lay on her side, facing me. A child’s nightlight, in the shape of a kitten, reflected off the clear plastic bag over her head. There was an electrical cord wrapped around her neck, which she held tightly with both hands. The plastic over her mouth drew in and out with each shallow breath. Her eyes looked huge.

“Kill me!”

I rushed towards the bed, and grabbed the cord. She released her grip immediately, and I unwound it. I lifted the bag over her face. She gulped in several large breaths while I stood there, wondering why she had been pulling the cord tighter.

Finally, she spoke.

“Please. Please. I can’t do it. Kill me, please.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I want to die! Please, I want to die!” She was crying now, but no tears came, as if she was just too old and dried up to produce them.

“Why?” I asked. She was really scaring me.

“I don’t want to hurt no more. I’m too old.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said:

“How old are you?”

“Ninety-nine. I’m ninety-nine years old. Ninety-nine. I’m ninety-nine. Ninety-nine.”

Her teeth clicked in her mouth, which must’ve been very dry. I saw her lips were cracked.

“I’ll call somebody.”

It wasn’t the weight of the gun that bothered Jimmy, it was its outline. He was only going to use it if he had to, if something went wrong, but he didn’t want any mistakes. Not today. He didn’t want to attract unwanted attention, even for a moment.

It only takes a moment to really screw things up, sometimes.

Jimmy, more than most, was keenly aware of this.

He didn’t like the look he got from that business guy in the elevator. There wasn’t a second look, but all it would take was a call to security for things to go wrong, so he ducked out of the elevator on the 17th floor and into a bathroom. Maybe it was just his imagination. Everybody said he had a wild one. Always daydreaming. Woolgathering, his dad would say.

He checked the stalls, and when he knew he was alone, looked at himself from all angles in the mirror.

Didn’t show. Good. It wasn’t the best place to hide it, but it was the only place for him.

Jimmy never carried his gun anywhere but his breast pocket. He knew of too many guys who blew off various body parts when they got in a jam or had to draw quickly. His old buddy Jackie actually shot himself in the ass running from the cops after a B&E went south when he tripped the silent alarm. It sounded funny, but Jackie ended up in a wheelchair. Jimmy never wanted to make a mistake like that.

If his gun was going to go off accidentally, he wanted it over his heart.

Especially today.

Today, Jimmy was going to kill himself.

He exited the bathroom and went back to the elevators. A pretty secretary gave him a sideways glance, but he wasn’t worried about that. He flashed her his killer smile, the one he always used, and she blushed into her file folders.

With your wild imagination, his mother always said, you should be in the movies. And you’re so handsome, too. You look just like…and then her voice would trail off, and Jimmy could feel the overwhelming sadness rolling in like the tide.

She must’ve said that fifty times, and always stopped at exactly the same point, as if she’d buried the thing so deep she kept forgetting it was there, right up until the moment it rose up and slapped her down again.

Jimmy rode the elevator to the top floor, spent a couple of minutes working on the door to the roof, and then went into a storage room to wait. He knew where everything was.

Nothing much had changed since his dad worked in the building. He and his brother ran all over the place when he worked late, which was almost all the time. They had only one car, so their mother would drop their father off in the morning before taking the boys to school, and bring them along when she picked him up after work. But he always had more to do. Overtime killed him, their mother said. But that was a long time ago.

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“Hey, Jimmy!” His brother, Danny, older by four years, called out to him. Jimmy started out of his daydream.

He was 13, and this was his most memorable summer.

Danny was waiting at the end of the street, smiling that broad, handsome smile their mother always raved about. You should be in the movies, Danny-boy, she’d always say. People are drawn to you.

The girl stared up at the tiny window, nostrils flaring as if she could smell the patch of orange sky which appeared briefly each day just before nightfall. This was her favorite time and nothing could tear her gaze away before the last warm sliver disappeared from view, as numerous scars on her fragile form could attest.

When the orange was gone, she would close her eyes and imagine it, and the memory would warm her face like a soft summer breeze. She looked forward to this time of day, and how it made her feel.

It was the only way she could bear it.

In the beginning, she begged for a longer leash so she could move across the room and prolong her view of the sky at dusk. The opening was small, but her malnourished body would never squeeze through even if she were able to reach it. He must’ve known that. But when she asked, he just looked at her strangely and shook his head. After that, his refusals grew increasingly bloody. Eventually she stopped asking.

His surprise when he swung open the heavy cellar door one day only to find her in the center of the room was such that for a brief moment, had she been ready, she might have run by him and up the cement steps. But her mind was on the vibrant sky, and her only motivation for gnawing through the rope was to move about the room so she could follow it. Escape was not in her thoughts; her focus on the patch of orange and the warmth it represented was so intense she never even heard him come in. Her concentration was broken only by a loss of consciousness when he struck her.    

After that he used chains.

Even had she the prescience to run, she would not have gotten far. He kept her naked and barefoot, and the nearest road was well over a mile away.

She did not know this, of course. She had been in the cellar for almost ten years, and had even forgotten how she came to be there. It was almost as if she had been delivered from the fracture in the cement foundation, borne of the thick mud that oozed from the earth below during especially heavy rains.

For a time she held vague memories of another life and other people, but those images faded quickly, like Polaroid pictures in reverse, and she was left with more an instinct of her past than any specific knowledge of it. Whether this was a trick her unconscious played for the sake of self preservation, or because she was only four when he took her, was not a question she could even begin to ponder. Her mind had atrophied at the same slow but steady rate as her body, and except for those few precious moments each day when the window burned brilliant, she was like a dead thing, inside and out. During the winter months she sometimes didn’t move for days, and one would assume her a corpse if one happened upon her, especially with the smell in the chamber. The only time she seemed alive was when the colors of the sunset could be seen from her angle on the floor, and the moments after, when she closed her eyes and imagined it.

Her days were spent waiting for those moments.

She didn’t notice when the bleeding started. The sunset had just disappeared, so she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the rough brick wall, imagining the soft summer breeze in her face. If anything, the tingling between her legs seemed like an extension of the warmth from the orange sky, and she wasn’t conscious of it as a separate thing. She was immersed in her fantasy, and so did not hear the door open, or sense him move towards her, fists clenched.

When she woke up, he was on her, thrusting between her spindly legs with an urgency she had not seen since he first brought her here. He had gained weight over the years, becoming large and slovenly; his violence now was slow and deliberate. But this was something she did not understand.

Not like the usual punishments.

He finished and heaved himself onto his knees, breathing heavily through his mouth. As he stared down at her, she kept her gaze focused in the middle of his chest. She had learned not to look directly into his eyes, and not to lower her own so far they appeared closed. She could never be sure, but his chest seemed to be the spot which produced the least reaction, and so she always looked there. Sometimes he got violent, anyway.

She had not the slightest fear of him or his ways, but some primitive corner of her brain still led her down the path of least resistance. Or perhaps it was simply routine, the mind taking over the function of its weary host.

But then he did something he had never before done, something which shocked her so she actually flinched, which had not happened for years, no matter the ferocity of his actions.

He leaned in close and kissed her cheek. This stoic thing she had become, who never cried nor dodged a single blow, actually cringed in fear at his sudden tenderness. He felt her revulsion and held her tight, his fetid breath hot in her ear.

“I love you,” he whispered, and bit down, hard.

The pain calmed her because it was familiar, as he knew it would.

He stood up and left her alone in the dark with her blood and his semen drying between her legs.

**********

The man hit him again, opening a cut over the boy’s eye and almost immediately swelling it shut. He stood over the cowering ten year old, enjoying the uncertainty.

When the boy finally dropped his weakened arms, the man kicked him in the face.

After a moment, he turned and tromped heavily up the cement steps, leaving his unconscious son locked in the cellar, and –

**********

He bolted awake, drenched in sweat. The nightmares were usually only this bad during the summer. When he was a boy, his father, a stern, unforgiving man who taught history at the high school in town, beat him frequently. In the summer months the beatings were much worse, because the old man had nothing to do all day except drink and rail against the boy, whom he blamed for the death of his wife in childbirth. It got so bad the boy’s face often didn’t completely heal until weeks into the school year, and was at times so tender even a stiff summer breeze would sting. The boy grew to hate going outside more than he feared his father, and would purposefully misbehave to be locked in the cellar. It was cool and damp and far away from the monster upstairs and the pain of bright summer days and the scorn of other children. His favorite time was just after the sun had set. He looked forward to that time of day, and how it made him feel.

It was the only way he could bear it.

**********

When he first saw the blood between her legs, he was transfixed. Horrific memories from his youth suddenly flooded his mind, and he watched his childhood go by so quickly the years blended together into a single picture, like the design on a spinning top. The image gradually changed into something he found almost beautiful. He was shocked at his emotional reaction, and might’ve stood there for hours except the girl suddenly closed her eyes and tilted her head back. He knew what she was doing, and it roused him from his reverie. He moved towards her, fist raised.

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The girl didn’t notice the beatings came less often, and were much less severe. She had no idea he was feeding her larger portions, or that he cleaned up after her more frequently. Her days were spent as they had always been, waiting to escape into that primordial recess of her mind which instinctively remembered what it was like as a child to play in the sun, to touch cool grass beneath her feet and feel the warm summer breeze across her face.

Whatever transformation had occurred within the mind of her captor was no more evident to the girl than the changes happening inside her own body, which was now feeding and caring for his child.

She passed the time as she always had, waiting to view the restorative sky.

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He was unaware when the child died.

The birth was surprisingly easy, but he had trouble at first making her understand she must lift the baby to her breast when it cried. He hit her for the first time in months, but her reaction was the same as if the violent routine had been unbroken. Finally, her instincts seemed to take hold, and after a couple of days it seemed like she was doing well. Whenever he went downstairs, the baby was nursing, and he left her alone for the most part to bond with her child. For the first time in his life he felt like he was part of a family, and even pondered bringing the girl and his son upstairs. But there was something he had to do first.

She held the baby to her breast all the time now. Her instincts had indeed taken hold, but it was more self preservation than maternal in nature. She simply understood this position was least likely to provoke a violent reaction.

Unaware at first that the child had died, she held its lifeless body to her breast for at least a day in a perverse imitation of that beautiful, life giving act. When she finally realized the child was not suckling and lowered its limp body into her lap, she perceived more than felt the emotional attachment to the child which she sensed she should possess but didn’t. And for the first time in her life, she felt hate and anger. In spite of everything she had suffered, or perhaps because of it, she had been devoid of feelings and all that was human for so long these sudden emotions startled her in their intensity. It was as if the child had restored some small part of her humanity. And just as she felt the strange sensation of tears welling up in her eyes, the cellar door opened and she quickly lifted the child to her breast.

He paid her no mind, walking past to study the tiny window, which held no allure for her now. He examined the wall beneath, as if mentally measuring its distance to the floor. She watched him closely, but averted her eyes when he turned and went back up the steps, slamming the door behind him. She held the body of her child close against her chest and waited.

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The girl stared up at the tiny window, her nostrils flaring as if she could smell the patch of orange sky. She was rocking the child, caressing its head and whispering into its ear when the window suddenly went black.

Several minutes later, the cellar door opened, and he came downstairs with a small stepladder and a toolbox.

After the window was sealed from both sides, he turned to face her. She stared into his chest, holding the child tight against her own.

He leaned down and grabbed her head, pulling her face up so that her eyes met his. She felt the hatred surge so strongly she knew he must see it. He would discover the child was dead, and he would beat her, and she would have nothing. Not the orange sky at sunset, nor the memory of a summer breeze which had comforted her for so long.

But he just looked at her for a moment and finally stood up, gathering his tools and ladder and tromping back up the steps.

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He knew she needed that window, and could feel her anger when he took it away. But she would get used to its absence, and when she was ready, he was going to bring her upstairs. He would feed her and clothe her, and she would raise their child to be unafraid of the sunlight and hot summer days. Their child would have the best of both worlds, the light and the dark, and he would not treat his son like he had been treated. He had even decided he would never again strike the girl he had taken so long ago. For the first time in years he realized he could feel, and was grateful to her for that. He was a monster with self awareness, and never before had he let himself hope. He almost believed, with time, they could be happy. He almost believed he could be human again.

It was as if the child had restored some small part of his humanity.

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He rested his chin on her shoulder as he struggled with the key behind her. When she heard the lock open, she dropped the child and jammed the thing in his eye with all the force she could muster. He screamed in pain and fell backwards, breaking the brittle bone in half as he tried to wrench it from his head.

She rolled away from him and reached for the baby, whose tiny arm she had gnawed through and twisted below the elbow, and part of which now protruded from her captor’s eye socket.

She grabbed the tiny feet in both hands, and swung the child’s body high, smashing its head directly down into his face, driving the bone into his brain. The last thing to go through his mind before the radius of his dead son was the memory of how he’d so often prayed in this very spot for his suffering to end.

She climbed the cement steps, leaving the basement forever. Escape was not something she had ever considered, but the feeling she had as she left the house was indescribable. It was pure happiness, something so alien she literally trembled when she stepped off the porch and felt the cool grass beneath her feet. She stood naked in the sun and lifted her face to the sky, closing her eyes and actually feeling the soft summer breeze across her face. She had imagined this for so long, it didn’t seem real, and -

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She started awake, and for several moments didn’t realize where she was. It had seemed so corporeal, the birth, the death, and the freedom, that for a moment she expected to see on the cement next to her the corpses of her captor and her child joined together by bone, just as she left them.

When she tried to move, she felt the pull of the chains and realized her escape had been a cruel joke, played by a revived subconscious which had protected her in dormancy for most of her life. Overwhelming sadness washed over her in waves that dwarfed the unbridled bliss of her dream.

She looked up at the window to see if the orange sky had appeared, but she knew it would never be the same.

Never would the soft summer breeze in her waking imagination challenge the one she experienced as she slept. It was as if she had finally broken, finally allowed herself to feel, only to be pulled back into the abyss. This young girl, after so much suffering, finally understood what hope was.

And she knew she had none.

Moments later, the heavy door swung open, and he tromped down the steps, carrying a tray of food and a bucket, as he had thousands of times before.

And she knew she could not bear it much longer.

As he fed her, she looked directly into his eyes, daring him to strike her, but he just wiped her mouth tenderly and continued.

When he was gone, she stared up at the tiny window, her nostrils flaring as if she could smell the patch of orange sky. It had once been her favorite time of day, and when it was over, she closed her eyes and tried to imagine the warmth of a soft summer breeze, but her thoughts continually drifted back to her dream.

She felt a kick in her belly, which was getting quite large on her tiny frame.

And she knew she would not have to bear it much longer.

The McAllen farm was always the subject of wild gossip after the old man came to town for supplies, which was roughly four times a year. He was actually just in his forties, but his manner resulted in the senior designation. He was plain mean, and that meanness was like a black hole, exerting such an inward force no joy or happiness could possibly exist within, and it was obvious from three blocks away.

Because of his sour disposition, no one who knew of him would consider initiating a conversation, even to mention the weather, but there always seemed to be a new person in town with whom the locals could have a little fun. It was usually one of the high school boys who’d do it. He’d sidle up to the new resident, who knew nothing of the strange McAllen family or the old man’s temper, and suggest the hapless person offer to help the old man load his supplies into the back of his ancient truck.

The result would usually be one of the most shocking displays of vulgarity the clueless helper had ever experienced, and one that could be heard up and down Main Street, eliciting chuckles from old timers and stares from newer residents lucky enough to be a witness to his anger and not a recipient.  

But the last time it happened shocked everyone, regardless of tenure, and the tragic consequences echoed across the decades like an evil bell, tolling its misery and suffering upon the innocent.

This time, old man McAllen just looked at the stranger, who waited politely for a response to his offer, though growing warier as the silence grew longer. The prankster looked on nearby, puzzled at the delayed eruption.

Finally, McAllen did something he had never before done, something which shocked the prankster so he actually flinched, which had also never happened, no matter the ferocity of the farmer’s actions.

Old man McAllen agreed.

Witnesses to the event were stunned as he allowed the newcomer to lift a feed bag up onto the gate of his truck. Years later, everyone in town spoke of it as if they had actually watched it happen, but in truth, there were few who did. It was like a sporting event whose crowd of spectators, over time, grew in size much larger than the venue could possibly hold.

Some remembered it was on the first bag when McAllen calmly removed a knife from his belt and slit the stranger’s throat. Others said he’d waited patiently until the entire truck was loaded. What was undisputed was, when the guilty prankster ran to the aid of the stranger, McAllen intercepted him and jammed the knife into the corner of his eye, popping it into the street like a button off a banker’s suit.

The reason this detail was not in question is because Jimmy Foster, who still sits outside his father’s drug store most days, regularly lifts his eye patch to strangers after recounting the story and telling them how amazed they’d be at just how big an eyeball actually is, before offering to display the phantom organ as he pretended to search his pockets.

Once a prankster, always a prankster.

Shortly after he entered prison, old man McAllen was brutally murdered by a cell mate who could no longer tolerate his nonsensical, late night ramblings. His throat was cut open with a chicken bone sharpened against a metal bed frame, after which the cellmate slept soundly, not waking even when the blood soaked through the thin mattress and dripped onto his forehead during the night. Old man McAllen was forty-seven years old.

During his trial, it had become known just how strange the McAllen family was. When the house was searched, it was discovered their only child, a thirteen year old son by the name of Junior, had been kept locked in the cellar for up to eighteen hours a day from the time he was four.

He had supposedly died shortly after birth, but the body in his grave was actually an older unnamed sister for whom a cause of death could not be determined so long after her demise. The boy was put in school, but the horrors of his childhood were fodder for the cruel derision of his peers, and he lasted barely a year. There were laws on the books which could have been used to punish his mother, but no one seemed willing to subject the family to any more suffering than they had already endured, and the McAllens were left alone after that.

Until the disappearance of four year old Sadie Williams.

The girl went missing two summers after Mrs. McAllen died. Junior McAllen inherited the farm and the acreage surrounding it. He was twenty-nine by then, and rumors of his strangeness only grew after his mother passed. His father had left a substantial sum to his mother, who passed it to him, and it was possible he would never again have to work the farm if he sold a bit of timber from the north side of his property every few years and lived frugally, which he appeared to do. He came into town even less frequently than did his father, although with nowhere near the attention. He was merely a curiosity to most, though the occasional teen would jeer his parentage or appearance, which Junior steadfastly ignored.

They called him ‘that half-wit’ even when he was near enough to hear, and rumors of his father’s cruelty were wildly inventive. Some said old man McAllen had cut his son’s pecker off before he went to jail, so his little head would match his big head. 

Mostly, he was pitied, until the disappearance of four year old Sadie Williams.

Sadie’s father was a large, easy going man with nine other children whose mother died when Sadie was born. His farm bordered the McAllen place, and his first thought was that Junior McAllen had taken his daughter. He was not alone in that assumption.

A group of men from the surrounding area caught Junior as he came out of his ramshackle barn that afternoon, and beat him within an inch of his life. As he laid broken and bleeding just steps from his front porch the sheriff arrived with news that the little girl had been found. She had simply wandered off and was discovered on the road by a well meaning family who took her into the next town, after which a simple miscommunication led to the delay in identification.

Most thought it odd rather than charitable when Junior failed to press charges against those who battered him. Even his best intentions were suspect.

But the incident did factor into the actions of law enforcement when little Mary Lansford went missing the following autumn.

Mary Lansford was an angelic little towhead whose appearance often stole the breath of those who saw her for the first time. She was one of those golden children, so heart achingly beautiful that other parents almost looked ashamed when they looked at their own kids.

More than one parent audibly sighed when told little Mary was a deaf mute, as if grateful the good Lord had withheld something from the child that a moment ago had so outshone their own.

Some of the folks in town wanted Sheriff Potter to immediately search the McAllen farm, but Potter wasn’t about to risk a lawsuit or his job by operating outside procedure. Besides, he remembered all too well what had happened the last time.

So Potter simply called Junior McAllen on the phone to request he come down for an interview.

Just as Junior picked up the phone, Potter heard a loud crash, screaming voices, and then the line went dead. He knew immediately what was happening.

When the sheriff and his deputy pulled up next to several cars parked askew in front of the ramshackle McAllen house, it was obvious someone had endured quite a beating. There was blood all over the porch, with several teeth and even what looked like a piece of wispy scalp swimming in the gore.

A large knife was stuck deep in one of the rotting wood columns that framed the front of the house, and it looked like a piece of collar was embedded with it.

Potter and his deputy banged through the screen door. The house looked like a tornado had blown through, and it was just as eerily quiet. They drew their guns and looked at each other.

“Anybody here?”

Silence.

Potter motioned the deputy down the hall, and slowly approached the splintered, half-opened door to the front bedroom. He took a deep breath and pushed it open.

The room was trashed, but empty. As he turned to leave, he heard a scream from the back of the house.

Potter ran down the hall and rushed into the filthy back bedroom. His deputy was just standing there, his back to Potter, facing the corner.

“What the hell happened?”

The deputy spun around, looking sheepish.

“Big fuckin’ rat jumped outta the closet,” he said, sheepishly. “Scared the shit outta me.”

“Fuck’s sake.”

“Ran right into the wall. Big as a cat.”

Potter looked past the deputy at the broken plaster.

“Jesus Christ.”

Potter walked over for a closer look, but something slammed shut outside the house and shook the thin walls.

Potter and the deputy, realizing simultaneously, rushed into the hall and outside.

They ran around the side of the house to an old cellar door and opened it, the dankness immediately assaulting them. Potter propped the door open to take advantage of the outside light, but it barely helped. They went down several steps past the reaches of the faint light from the doorway.

“Go get your flashlight. Hurry it up.”

The deputy nodded and disappeared up the steps.

Potter waited for several minutes, debating whether to continue down the narrow steps or check on the deputy, when he heard a muffled scream from below.  

“Hell.”

He descended into the darkness.

The cement steps turned sharply and the light from the outside receded to nothingness just as an eerie sob emanated from deep below the house. He could barely see but he quickened his pace along the narrow steps, feeling his way along the walls and finally coming to a thick wooden door.

Potter holstered his gun so he could swing it open by its thick, rusted handle.

A faint orange glow crept around the edge of the door.

And then the lights really went out.

When Potter woke up, he was cuffed and propped up in the corner of a large root cellar with cheap plywood walls. A single lantern provided the only light from the far side of the room. Several men stood in a semi circle around the miserable lump of flesh and bone that was Junior McAllen. He was tied to a four by four support post, and he was beaten almost beyond recognition.

His captors, townsmen all, looked beaten and tired themselves. They obviously had expended great physical effort in this endeavor, without result. One of them was kneeling and another was bent over with his hands on his knees like he wanted to puke.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Potter yelled.

The men turned around.

“He took my baby girl.”  It was Mary Lansford’s father.

“How do you know that?”

“Bobby saw her hair ribbon out front,” Lansford said.

“I said it looked like her hair ribbon.” 

Lansford turned to the speaker. “You said it was hers.”

“I said it looked like hers.”

“Uncuff me, goddamnit.”

Lansford walked slowly over to the sheriff. “He took my little girl.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Not yet.”

The sheriff looked past Lansford to Junior.

“He ain’t gonna tell you shit now, you goddamn fool. You beat him too bad. Now uncuff me.”

“Bobby saw her hair ribbon.”

The man who was kneeling stood up.

“I said it looked like her hair ribbon.”

Lansford rushed him, taking Bobby by surprise, screaming with rage and pain and sorrow that echoed violently around the room as the other men, startled at first, moved to pull him off.

Potter nearly wrenched his shoulder out of its socket reaching for his spare key, but finally got the cuffs off. He pulled his gun and fired into the floor.

Out of chaos, silence.

For the first time, Potter noticed the weapons the men had found in the kitchen and brought down to this hellhole to torture this poor, miserable creature. He felt sick to his stomach.

He was about to speak when he heard it.

A tiny, scratching sound.

From just behind the far wall.

Where the wood looked a little different.

Newer.

Lansford scrambled to his feet and grabbed the cleaver from the dirt floor.

Upon later reflection, Potter was stunned at his slowness at this key moment. Most of the time he was able to assuage his guilt by remembering he merely assumed what everyone else assumed.

He assumed, of course, that Lansford thought, as they all did, that his daughter was hidden behind that wall. She was scratching to get out. It had to be. They had done too much, come too far, and this was how it must resolve.

So of course her father’s grabbing that cleaver to bust her out.

Instead, he buried the cleaver in Junior McAllen’s skull.

Now Potter’s reflexes sped up.

He shot Lansford out of pure instinct. He didn’t think about that golden child, that beautiful little blue eyed, blonde haired angel trapped in that dank pit, with the worms and the spiders and no voice to cry. He didn’t think about anything. He just blew her father’s face onto the cheap plywood that held her captive.

Lansford fell on top of Junior, and for a moment there was complete silence.

Until Potter leaned over and threw up.

When he finally stopped, he looked around for something to pry the plywood apart at the joint, and nearly lost it again when he saw the only thing that could do the job.

Potter rolled Lansford off Junior and pulled the cleaver out of his skull. A couple of the men vomited at the gaping hole that was their friend’s face. It didn’t help at all that that face was plastered right across the seam between the panels.

Potter leveraged the panel and finally pried it out enough to get his fingers behind it.

He yanked the panel back, pushing it open as the common nails groaned.

He grabbed the lantern and shone it into the wall.

“Oh God, no” Potter whispered, so softly no one could hear.

And then he fainted.

The lantern fell to the floor, and the men screamed in blackness.

When the deputy finally convinced the townsman who got the drop on him to just let him take a flashlight and go down there, he nearly tripped over the men as they crawled in total darkness up the cement steps.

Potter was not among them.

When the deputy opened the heavy wooden door, Potter was sitting next to Lansford and Junior, weeping in their blood.

The deputy shone the light into the wall and saw the source of the scratching.

It was a fat mother rat, suckling her babies.

The sheriff had the entire house boarded up immediately. There would be a grand jury convened next month, but until then no one was going into that house. Halloween was coming, and he didn’t want any pranksters in there.

That night, inside the house, in the back bedroom, in the corner, through the broken plaster, inside the wall, little Mary Lansford woke up.

Like many who were born deaf, her sight was extremely keen, so Mary saw them immediately, though it was almost pitch black in the wall of the shuttered house.

It was both a cruel irony and a blessing that Junior had not only bound her hands and feet, but taped her mouth as well.

The rats’ eyes glinted in the darkness.

McCain stood on the bank of the once great river and pissed into poison.

Funny that after all the invasions and troop surges and dirty bombs and oil it was finally the water that stopped the war. Oh, there was still fighting and killing and dying, but once the water turned, the Americans pulled out no and one had the energy for anything like the long predicted civil war. Mostly it was revenge and honor shit, now. Small potatoes, comparatively speaking. At least on this side of the water. The other side? Well, that was another story. There were, however, enough corpses to keep him in business.

There were rumors the Americans themselves had developed whatever agent had turned the river into one giant meandering biohazard, but they were, of course, denied. McCain didn’t know and didn’t care.

He zipped up and stared across the river at the blackened city with its ruined monuments, whose ghostly presence mocked his former life. He sighed and turned his attention to the dark water. It was hypnotic. It drew you in. Like someone who never stood too close to the edge of a precipice, not because they might fall but out of fear they would jump, McCain tried not to look directly into the water very often. It was a kind of perverse pleasure, as if tempting fate could somehow make things right again. Like before he’d lost control. Before he’d lost Nadia.

The boat edged up against the rocks behind him and the dull scraping sound brought him out of his reverie. He sighed and looked at the bloated corpse near his feet, rolling the gloves back up past his forearms. Shouldn’t have gotten off the boat, he thought. Better to stay on the water and leave the weed-whacks to the burn squad. Still, he did get paid by the pound. He put a bullet in the dead guy’s brain and dragged him toward the boat.

They told him it was unnecessary, that it was the water that made them turn a few days after death and not death itself, but he shot them anyway. He’d found a good sized cache of ammunition on one of his midnight runs and figured he’d keep putting one in the brain as long as it held out. They just laughed and allowed him his eccentricities. His job was hard to fill, and so what if the crazy ex-Marine still had a little cowboy in him?

McCain didn’t care what they thought. It made him feel better. He just couldn’t shake the yolk of old zombie flicks. American culture at its finest.

They fed them the floaters, and those on dry land were burned. Kinda like that old Cuban wet foot, dry foot policy, only neither foot got a leg up, if you catch that drift.

Hakim was still trying to re-start the motor of the aging craft as McCain winched the body above the pile of fetid corpses in the back of the boat. They used to bag out the most badly decomposed, but now they just filled up bottom to topside, and they were near the end of their run. This guy might be the cherry on today’s flesh sundae. Thank fuck nothing dropped off him through the holes in the netting. McCain hated when that happened. He was expected to fish out the parts that did. No waste was their motto. McCain considered painting that on the side of the boat as a macabre joke, but he didn’t care enough anymore. He only wanted to stay afloat until he found Nadia. He chuckled at the double entendre. At least he could still crack wise once in a while.

Hakim retched behind him. McCain shook his head. Poor asshole. Takes a while to get used to it. He’d only been on the job two weeks, and McCain doubted he’d last much longer.

The smell didn’t bother McCain, anymore. Hell, the whole city stunk to high heaven, anyway. McCain rolled the body out of the net. He could probably french kiss this fucker without blanching.

He sneered at Hakim. His partner would probably do a lot more than that on a solo run, the cocksucker.

McCain’s laugh caught Hakim between starts, and he paused and looked over with flat, incurious eyes. Those goddamn inscrutable eyes generations of war had imbedded in his people. They all had the same eyes, no matter the age or gender. McCain wished they’d fucking breed outside their sects already so his great-great grandchildren’s great-great grandchildren wouldn’t have to look into eyes like that. Fuck you eyes, McCain called them. Screw the gooks, try reading these motherfuckers across the flop and like as not you’ll leave the casino wearing a burka. They really should learn to play poker, he thought, just as Hakim fired another crank and the engine sputtered to life. They all had the same eyes.

Except for Nadia. She had the most amazing eyes. Violet. How the fuck does that happen? He’d never seen anything so beautiful. Eyes that couldn’t lie. Eyes you could fall into. He didn’t know if the soul existed, but he could see her heart through those fucking eyes. Her eyes told you exactly how she felt. She’d be shit at poker, absolute shit.

McCain sighed and took a deep breath until the emotion passed.

Actually, the main thing that bothered him about Hakim was his refusal to learn the game. Even though the fucker would probably kick his ass once he got the hang of it, it’d be worth it for a little Texas Hold ‘Em in the afternoons after they bagged their floata quota.

The return trip took about as long as the sweep even with the extra weight, but without all the stops that made card games impossible. They normally did about thirty a day, and couldn’t safely carry more than forty-five. Their record was fifty-seven dead bodies retrieved from the river, and holy fuck was that a slow run back upstream. You’d think they’d start at the other end and travel back with the flow of the river at their heaviest, but everything about this place was backasswards since the Americans pulled out. Not that it was much better when they were here. 

McCain guessed it had something to do with whatever remnants of routine remained hardwired in those lifeless little brains across the river. Those things on the other side all congregated at the same time and place every day, expecting to be fed. So the run went according to their needs, not the needs of some dumb ass American holdout stupid enough to stay behind after the war ended.

McCain stayed for Nadia, and he’d regretted it ever since. Not because she wasn’t worth it. He just regretted he hadn’t taken her out of this hellhole when he still had the chance.

Her parents reacted badly when they found out she was seeing an American. Nadia had managed to keep the relationship secret just long enough for him to fall in love with her, but not long enough to allow him to figure a way out  before the whole place went to hell in a hand basket.

Once her family knew, they did everything they could to keep them apart. But nothing worked. They were too much in love. Then two weeks ago her family had gotten desperate and hidden her away, probably at some relative’s house and definitely against her will. Despite McCain’s most fervent pleas her father refused to give him any information whatsoever.

So every night since, he scoured the city looking for her or anyone who knew where she was being held. With her byzantine family tree and the war torn condition of the city, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. The only reason he didn’t quit his job on the river and search full time was because his meager pay provided the bribes which he believed were his best bet to find her. 

He’d always been a loner, raised in a dysfunctional family to say the least, and he’d joined the service in a last gasp effort to escape his miserable life. He’d never even had a girlfriend before. So when Nadia came into his life it was as if he’d been re-born. Everything changed for him. He kept the undershirt he was wearing the last time they made love in a sealed plastic bag, afraid to release her scent, but wanting more than anything to rip it open and smell her on him, to taste her on his clothing. The last words she spoke to him were, “One day we’ll be as one, forever and ever.” He’d laughed and thought her silly, but he’d give his left arm just to feel her breath in his ear one more time.  

If he didn’t find her soon, he didn’t know what he’d do.

But he’d been looking at the water far too often, lately.

They made the trek back upstream in silence. McCain usually took the helm on the way back, but he didn’t offer and Hakim didn’t complain. It was near dark when they finally reached the barge at the widest part of the river and unloaded the cargo.

“You want?” Hakim asked.

“No. Take us home.”

Hakim nodded and pulled away from the barge.

A short time later the motor died. Hakim tried to start it, but McCain could hear something was different.

Shit, McCain thought. Shouldn’t have let the kid bring us home. Pushed the old engine a little too hard on the way back upstream, probably. McCain looked after the barge, but the old driver was chugging toward the opposite shore and he’d never come back, anyway.

“Fuck!”

Hakim just looked at him with those unreadable eyes.

McCain sighed and went for the tool box.

He stopped for a smoke before he started the repairs. Hakim fanned the air and moved to the other side of the boat. The fires across the river constantly poured smoke out across the water so their entire run was spent in the acrid haze of whatever the zombies were burning that day and this moron can’t handle my one cigarette of the day? Fuck him. McCain would have to quit once his supply ran out anyway, so the kid could tough it out tonight. Too damn expensive and he needed all his money to find Nadia.

McCain watched the barge hook up to the lift at the sea wall on the other side of the river. He didn’t think he’d ever actually watched the feeding. Usually he was back ashore long before now and off on his own nightly obsession.

The scene across the river was surreal. It was completely quiet except for the faint drone of hydraulics as the platform raised the catch to the feeding area at the top of the sea wall. The haze made the barge seem ghostly, and McCain was fascinated at what he saw next.

Shadow-like figures suddenly appeared on the wall, reaching out with pleading arms toward the pile of corpses being delivered to them. They almost seemed like baby birds, stretching their necks toward grubs brought back to the nest by their mother, until the platform got close enough to reach.

Dozens, maybe hundreds more shadows appeared and leapt atop the pile of bodies, literally ripping the corpses apart like overcooked chicken. The birds turned into sharks, and McCain stood mesmerized at the ghostly feeding frenzy. He idly wondered what would happen when the killing leveled off and there weren’t enough bodies to go around. There were rumors about that scenario, too.

He turned to call Hakim over to look just as his partner brought the rock down on his head.

----------   

When he woke up, McCain was bound to a chair in a small, shabby room with a bare wood floor and a single window, through which shone drab, smoky sunlight. It must have been late afternoon. His first instinct was to shout, but he thought better of it and decided to glean more information as to just exactly what the fuck happened. Over the course of the next hour, he managed to quietly maneuver his chair about a foot closer to the window. Just as he was straining his neck to see if he could look outside, the door opened and Nadia’s father hobbled in, raised his cane, and the lights went out again.

----------

The next time McCain woke up, it was dark and the door to the room was wide open. Candlelight flickered across the threshold. He could hear voices in the next room. McCain kept his head down and deciphered as much of the Arabic as he could.

He heard the voice of Hakim, and then it all started to make sense. Hakim was Nadia’s brother. And he was going to kill McCain tonight.

----------

When they came in, McCain was pretty sure how things needed to go if he was to live through this. He hoped they were old school, because that might be his only chance. Rituals meant time. Hakim and his father entered followed by another man, probably a cousin, carrying a candle and a large sword.

“Where’s Nadia?” McCain asked quietly.

Hakim struck him hard across the face, hatred in his eyes. Those goddamn eyes didn’t look so inscrutable now. Hakim stood there as if he was waiting for more, but McCain responded only with silence.

Those long nights he’d spent searching and her own brother was right under his nose. This enraged him, but he betrayed nothing. He’d accepted the fact her family held radically different beliefs, not realizing the way to find her had been right there all along. How could he have been so stupid? Love blurs reality; hate brings it into sharp focus. He hadn’t felt hate until this moment, and it was purifying in its clarity.

He watched as Nadia’s father prepared to pray. Hakim took a step back, obviously disappointed McCain had given him no reason to strike again.

He sized up the cousin. Big, probably stupid but you never know. Anyone with any training whatsoever knew better than to underestimate an unknown opponent.

McCain continued working the rope that bound his hands against the metal screw protruding from the chair. Thank god for the flickering candlelight, which forgave a multitude of sins.

Nadia’s father rose from his knees and nodded to the cousin, who placed the candle on the floor and drew his sword.

Fuck. Looks like the rituals aren’t what they used to be.

The cousin raised the blade.

McCain rubbed the rope more quickly against the metal, all pretense gone.

The sword came down.

McCain violently jerked his body, turning the chair and himself on its side.

The blade entered his leg mid-calf, slicing neatly through muscle and tendon and breaking his fibula.

Hakim lunged forward, knocking over the candle and plunging the room into darkness save for shards of smoky moonlight which danced off the eyes of the struggling men.

McCain pulled free and grabbed the blade, cutting his hands in the process. The cousin fell on him, and McCain lost his grip on the sword and went for the eyes. He got a thumb in and the man screamed, trying to roll off McCain.

McCain rolled with him, digging deeper and pushing his thumb past the eyeball.

Hakim scrambled for the sword, catching the glint of moonlight on the bloody blade.

McCain rolled himself and the cousin onto the sword, and hammered his forehead against his wrist, further embedding his thumb in the cousin’s eye socket.

The man howled in pain, and McCain hooked his thumb and yanked.

The cousin’s eyeball pulled loose, dangling by the optic nerve.

The big man passed out, and McCain felt the eyeball come to rest against his lips.

Hakim was on the floor now, using his leg as a brace against his cousin to pull the sword from beneath the two men.

McCain bit the man’s eye off.

Hakim finally pulled the sword out just as Nadia’s father lit a candle, bathing the gory room in flickering light.

Hakim raised the sword.

McCain hawked the eyeball at Hakim to distract him, copper spittle trailing after, and brought his knee up into the cousin’s crotch with all his might just as the sword cleaved open the big man’s skull and stopped a half inch from McCain’s forehead.

Hakim pulled at the sword, but his hands slipped and he fell backwards.

McCain grabbed the handle and gave a mighty pull, rolling over just as the sword came free.

He sat up and hacked into Hakim’s foot.

As his son wailed in pain, Nadia’s father kneeled to pray.

McCain righted the chair and managed to climb up and sit down.

He cut off the old man’s head with three blows.

McCain grabbed the old man’s cane and stood up painfully. Hakim was still writhing on the floor.

McCain smacked the flat part of the blade against his head

“Over there.” He motioned to the body of his cousin.

Hakim was crying. “What?”

McCain hit him again.

“Crawl if you have to.”

Hakim looked at him, not understanding.

“Crawl over to your cousin.”

Hakim did as he was told.

McCain limped over to Hakim and forced his face into the man’s cloven skull.

Hakim struggled but McCain held him down.

Finally, McCain lifted Hakim’s head out of his cousin’s brain. He vomited into the gaping wound and gasped for breath.

“Where’s Nadia?”

Hakim shook his head.

McCain forced his head back down and held it there.

When he let him up, Hakim spit out reddish grey soup and puked again.

“Where’s Nadia?”

Hakim, not yet able to speak, signaled with a nod he was ready to divulge his sister’s location.

McCain shoved his face back down into the vomit and the brains anyway.

When he finally let him up, Hakim gestured toward the window.

McCain dragged him to his feet, and they both limped painfully to the far wall.

Hakim pointed outside.

Across the river.

Whatever blood was left in McCain quickly drained out of his face.

“You bastard! You killed her!”

McCain drew back the sword, and Hakim, still unable to get a breath, was shaking his head no when the blade entered his mouth.

----------

McCain hobbled through the streets all night until everything went black.

He awoke at dusk, lying in weeds near the sandy banks of the poison river. He sat up and looked across the water. He could just make out through the haze the ghostly figures of the undead gathering on the feeding wall, waiting for the day’s pacifying carrion.

For the first time since he’d lost Nadia, he felt at peace.

The thick, lazy current lapped at the shore a foot away.

He crawled over and bent down, drinking deeply.

After his thirst was slaked, he sat watching the slivered sun slowly melt into the top of the hill on the other side of the Potomac.

The blackened monuments no longer mocked him, but beckoned instead to their cold embrace.

----------

EPILOGUE

The lift dumped the load onto the feeding platform atop the sea wall. Dozens of ravenous beings leapt onto the pile, tearing at the rotting flesh with sharpened teeth and fingers.

McCain’s body slipped off the side and tumbled down into the weeds at the base of the wall. A hungry thing in a faded burka descended upon the corpse and dragged it farther under the platform to feast in private.

After having its fill, the thing crawled out and lifted its violet eyes to the hunter’s moon.

“Emmitt can fix anything.”

Hazel looked at her new neighbor in the filthy wife-beater, the tobacco stains on his teeth reminding her of blood spattered piano keys for some reason.

Must be something I saw on the late, late show, she mused. One of those black and white horrors she couldn’t stop watching because the only alternative was the nightmare of her popcorn ceiling in the moonlight. It streamed through the thin curtains on restless nights and danced with the shadows of the dying oak tree outside her bedroom window.

I wish they’d cut that fucking thing down already, she thought. It looked like it would fall at any moment and crush her little house, but with her luck it probably wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

Some things take way too long to die.

She’d had to leave another school, and was beginning to wonder exactly how many more in the state would allow her to enroll.

She looked at mister wife-beater, still happily chattering with his murderous keys, oblivious to her wandering thoughts and sneaking not-so-unobvious looks at her boobs.

Not-so-unobvious. ‘That’s what you call a double negative,’ Professor Bowden would say, ‘and that means what, class? That’s right! A no-no.’ It never mattered that no one answered his questions. He always acted as if they had.

When she had trouble with her grades last semester, she went to his office prepared to give him a sob story about her dead parents, but it turned out all he needed was a hand job.

This was just as well because her parents were living in Florida. They didn’t talk to her, but they were still breathing, as far as she knew. Last month’s plea for funds was returned as usual, with her mother’s spidery scrawl she recognized from the last dozen or so unopened letters.

It was funny, Hazel was pretty sure the post office would return them for free, but her mother always added a stamp along with ‘return to sender.’ One time the scrawl was in all caps and her mother added two stamps, which must’ve meant dad was smacking her around again. On second thought, the stamps were probably necessary.

Nothing in life came free.

After that first sticky but satisfying resolution to her grade problems, whenever Hazel hit a snag in class, all she had to do was schedule a teacher conference and the problem miraculously disappeared along with Professor Bowden’s feeble grey erection. Actually, the miracle was that he could get it up at all and she could stroke him off without losing her breakfast.

Speaking of which, it helped if she looked into his eyes the whole time. It made him finish faster and her less likely to end with an embarrassing upchuck. And what is that, class? That’s right! A win-win.

After the scandal, she was kicked out of school and her professor held onto his job by the foreskin of his teeth and how many hand jobs did that cost him, she wondered? Hazel had snuck back to see him only once, and that had ended badly. Well, badly for one of them.

And so she ended up two towns over in this run down bungalow court listening to the douche-drinking welcome wagon tell her how to get the old handyman to fix the drippy faucet in her bathroom.

“You gotta ask him loud,” mister wife beater said, still grinning through murderous choppers, “and you gotta ask nice.”

Yeah, right, Hazel thought. If there’s anything she knew, it was how to get an old man to do her bidding.

“Well, thanks mister wife b-“Hazel stopped, giggling at her near mistake. Jesus, what the fuck’s wrong with me?

“What’s that?” he leered, leaning in.

Fuck. Dude probably hopes we’ll get it on in the laundry room or something while his better half was at the grocery store sniffing for the perfect kumquat.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know your name.”

“Call me whatever you like. Just don’t call the cops.”

Sweet Jesus, Hazel thought. Old guy’s delusional. 

 “Just kiddin.’ Jerry’s good.”

“I’ll bet he is,” Hazel said, as ambiguously as possible to both hide her disgust and keep open the possibility of using the guy for something later on.

Before he could either continue the witless banter or ejaculate in his slacks, or both, Hazel said: “Thanks, Jerry. Appreciate it,” and stepped back inside, locking the deadbolt.

She could almost hear his middle-aged semi wilt through the door.

The old handyman fixed the drip quicker than Hazel thought possible. His large, gnarled hands worked with surprising dexterity on the tiny parts he replaced inside the faucet. He didn’t speak unless Hazel asked him a question, and his replies were terse but without annoyance, as if he thought her a curious child who required endless patience.

“What’s that?”

“Stem.”

“And that?”

“Washer.”

“And that?”

“Seat.”

“What’s that stuff?”

“Dope.”

“What does it do?”

“Seals.”

Truth be told, Hazel was trying to bother him just for the hell of it. Her father was a plumber and she’d often watched him while he worked, so she knew her way around a leaky fixture. Her dad had wanted a son, but complications during her mother’s pregnancy precluded subsequent children. So Daddy indulged his daughter’s tomboyish nature until she grew breasts and he began to indulge himself.

Once Emmitt was finished, Hazel watched in silence as he packed up his ancient metal tool box, which must’ve weighed twenty-five pounds empty. She imagined he had every possible tool for every possible job in there. A man who didn’t fuck around when there was work to be done. Just like dear old dad.

Hazel followed him to the front door in silence, and then stopped him on the porch with a question:

“How come you don’t use teflon tape?”

He turned, and put a shaking hand up to his ear to indicate poor hearing. Funny she hadn’t noticed his tremor before.

“Why don’t you use teflon tape? Pipe dope’s messy.”

The old man just looked at her.

The moment lasted long enough that Hazel started to feel embarrassed, and was about to say forget it, thanks a lot, when he finally replied, “I like messy.”

And then he tipped his cap with a finger, just enough that it could be interpreted as either a chivalrous gesture or a sweaty adjustment to the warm summer day, and lumbered down the steps, listing to one side from the weight of his tools like a wounded freighter.

Hazel got a job at the coffee shop in town, which was walking distance from Bungalow Heaven, an area filled with small pre-war houses arranged in courts. Being a waitress there made her feel like she was a character in one of the old movies that never quite succeeded in making her insomnia bearable.

She daydreamed now even more than when she was in school. It was almost as if the banality of life forced her separation from reality, and she was simply waiting for the divorce to become final.

The days bled into each other, and she felt she was slowly becoming invisible, which only added to her general state of depression.

Sometimes she’d sit on her porch for hours staring into space, barely noticing anyone or anything until the sun went down and she realized it was time to try and sleep.

She began to entertain thoughts of suicide, and fantasized about her funeral and what everyone would say. She remembered reading about just that occurrence in one of Mark Twain’s books, and literally tore her meager belongings apart one night looking for his collected works before remembering she’d left most of her things in her dorm room months before when she got notice of her expulsion.

She sometimes fell asleep at night counting things she didn’t care about. It was as if she was in love with her misery. She enjoyed the romanticism of suffering, and it was perhaps the one thing she held onto.

Otherwise, she was very good at letting things go.

“Heard you’s havin’ trouble with your switch.”

Hazel just looked at the old handyman. She didn’t remember telling her landlord about the light, but maybe she mentioned it to Jerry-the-wife-beater and he’d sent word.

“Oh. Hi, Emmitt. Come on in, I guess.”

The old man carried in that enormous tool box, which made him waddle like a duck. Or a penguin. Yeah, a penguin. Like in Batman or that documentary with the eggs. Hazel smiled as she remembered the movie about those penguins guarding their eggs for so long in the cold. The male penguin just stood there for weeks or months or whatever it was, keeping that egg safe and warm until it could hatch and fend for itself. Why couldn’t her fucking father have been a penguin instead of such a fucking-

“Which one?”

Hazel started out of her daydream. She realized she was standing in the middle of her oval rug, the one her grandmother made, crying like a baby.

The old man just stood there looking at her, expressionless, waiting patiently for a reply.

“Huh?”

“What switch is gamy?”

Gamy? Hazel thought. That’s odd. It was so odd it immediately pulled her back into the real world and she said, “In there,” looking toward the bedroom.

He nodded.

Hazel went into the kitchen and wiped her face. What a fucking dork, crying in front of the old man. She ran some water in the sink and then turned it off quickly.

“What?”

For a moment, she received no answer. Maybe I’m hearing things, too. Nice.

The old man’s voice rumbled into the kitchen. “I said I could use your help.”

Hazel puzzled over this as she walked out of the kitchen. The old guy had fixed several minor annoyances in her house during the six months she’d been here, and had never said two unnecessary words, and certainly never needed any help.

When she walked into the bedroom, he handed her a flashlight and nodded toward the switch, which was now protruding from the wall attached to three wires.

She flicked on the flashlight and held the beam steady on the switch as he unscrewed the wires from its side. She didn’t think the flashlight really helped, but maybe the old guy had poor eyesight or something.

“This here’s the neutral. The black is your hot. This one here’s the ground.”

Hazel nodded, fascinated as much by the old man’s sudden willingness to talk as by the basic electrical lesson. He went on to explain how the switch interrupted the circuit, and she forgot all about the strangeness of his sudden chattiness and actually got interested in the way it worked.

“Town’s strict about stuff. Even got its own little health department, separate from the county.”

Hazel just nodded, unaware this was unusual.

When he finished, he thanked her for the help and replaced his tools in the heavy box.

She watched him leave, and went into the bedroom, flicking her switch on and off.

Something about the old guy made her smile.

She started calling him directly, bypassing the landlord and requesting every possible repair she could think of. She hesitated to call more than once a week because she knew eventually the old bungalow would run out of things to fix, and his visits were the highlight of her week.

Each time he explained what he was doing and patiently answered her questions. Each visit was a lesson, and he was an excellent teacher. He was always oddly formal with her, never volunteering personal information and asking none of her, either. Hazel initially wondered whether he enjoyed talking to her or considered her bothersome, but after awhile she figured he was probably just a lonely old man and appreciated the company.

Eventually there was really nothing left which needed attention except the occupant. She thought routine maintenance might keep him coming occasionally, but there was nothing that warranted asking the old man to maintain his once a week pace.

Hazel thought about breaking something on purpose, but that seemed disrespectful to the old guy.

She decided she would just call him and invite him for coffee. She went over it a hundred times in her head, as nervous as hell for some reason, but when she finally asked, he agreed as matter-of-factly as if she was asking him to fix a broken cabinet hinge. They started meeting once a week at the coffee shop on her day off.

He spoke only of his work, describing repair jobs from the previous week and occasionally drawing diagrams on a napkin to better explain exactly how he fixed a particular item. She found his descriptions of the people and apartments he serviced hilarious and interesting and insightful all at once.

At first, she only spoke of her job as a way of respecting his reticence regarding personal information, but eventually most of her life story spilled out, all twenty-two years worth.

When she got to the really personal stuff, like the dating and the boys and the incident at school, he betrayed no shock or judgment of any kind.

She was becoming attached to the old guy, sure as hell.

That fall, she discovered her father had died. She waited patiently for her day with Mr. Fixit, which she had taken to calling him, determined to relay the information as calmly as when she received the news. She had not been invited to the funeral due to the bitterness of past accusations, and felt confident in her neutrality. But when she told Emmitt, her feelings poured out in an explosive rush of pain and anger that would have overwhelmed her had he not simply listened patiently, as he always did.

They had become friends, at least as much as either of them had ever allowed, though he’d told her almost nothing about himself and she was an endless fount of personal information. They were two weary travelers whose lonesome roads intersected at just the right time and place, and both, in different ways, were extremely grateful for that fact.

===============================================================

Emmitt was growing attached to Hazel, as sure as hell.

She was easy company, as his dad would say. She never asked personal questions, and he was glad to let her take over their weekly conversations with stories about her abusive father, and school, and all her asshole boyfriends. She’d had some rough times.

Sure, he got bored every now and then. She’d begun to repeat herself at times. I mean, how many stories did a young kid like her really have, anyway?

Still, he enjoyed the hell out of her, and wondered how long it would last. Eventually she’d ask him about something other than his work, and he’d have to answer. Then that would lead to another question, and sooner or later she’d get to the meat of it, and he’d have to tell her the truth. Well, he didn’t actually have to, but it was a rule he made for himself to keep things interesting.

He always told the truth.

Emmitt entered his ramshackle house just outside town. It was funny how he’d let the place go over the years while keeping up the domiciles of so many others. He was born in the house, and he figured he’d probably die there, too.

It was at the end of a long dirt road he’d meant to pave for forty years but had somehow just never gotten around to it. Didn’t seem to make much sense now. He had no children, no heirs. He imagined the state would take it over when he was gone. His grandfather had built the place in 1901 just after his father was born, and in all those years the town never edged any closer, which was fine with him.

He liked his privacy.

Emmitt sat heavily in his old recliner, tired after the day’s labor. Old man Bartlett’s boiler had failed, and he’d had to drive into the next town where they had a big box hardware store to save a few dollars on a replacement. Bartlett squeezed a nickel till the eagle screamed, and Emmitt couldn’t say he blamed him. But the driving tired him out almost as much as the actual work.

He was getting too old for this.

After supper, he watched TV for a little while, but it was all so trite nowadays. It sucked, as Hazel would say. He found himself thinking more and more about Hazel, lately. He was really quite fond of her.

He shut off the TV and went down to the cellar, where the girl was chained. He flipped the switch and dim light crept across the dank room. Truth be told, he could’ve worked without the light, so familiar was he with the implements hanging on pegs in the wall. Her eyes, bright and terrified, flew open and she shook her head violently from side to side, as if she could somehow ward off tonight’s attack with that tired gesture.

Like Hazel, she’d begun to repeat herself.

He decided to remove the gag tonight, just for variety. Plus it would probably keep her conscious longer if she could breathe through her mouth. He liked it to last on the final night. It was more satisfying, for some reason.

He removed the gag and turned his back to the screaming girl, finally deciding on the hacksaw.

Emmitt liked messy.

===============================================================

“Wow, this is exactly how I pictured it would look.”

Hazel looked around Emmitt’s living room, marveling at all the old books and lamps and fixtures.

“Old, you mean?”

Hazel laughed. There was a pause, and then they chuckled together. It felt almost like a first date, only comfortable.

Hazel touched a framed photograph on the mantle that looked to be over a hundred years old.

“Can I sit down?”

Emmitt nodded. Even after all this time, he still didn’t really talk much, Hazel thought.

Well, tonight she was going to make him tell her all about himself. She’d been anxious to ask him about his life, the things he’d done, the people he’d known. She wasn’t going to let him off the hook.

“So, Emmitt. Tell me all about yourself. I’ve been dying to know.”

Emmitt smiled.

“I was hopin’ you’d ask.”

===============================================================

Hazel left after midnight, exhilarated. She always felt so alive afterwards. She smiled at the thought. Always. The word made her sound more experienced than she was.

Still, this one was easier than Professor Bowden. Professor Bowden was messy.

Hazel hated messy.

When she shoved his own screwdriver into Emmitt’s temple, he had the oddest look on his face, like he wanted to warn her about the dangers of being careless with tools.

Maybe if she’d had a father like Emmitt...well, no use wondering.

She considered cleaning up and dragging his body down into the cellar to give herself more time before he was discovered, but he looked so peaceful she didn’t have the heart to move him.

And besides, Emmitt liked messy.

It was funny how two people so different could get along so well.

Hazel went home to pack.

Time to hit the road.

Billy looked up into his mother’s face, unsure. She slapped him hard but not too hard. She needed his help and it wouldn’t do if the boy were to pass out again.

“Help me drag your father into the parlor.”

*

William started awake, eyes watering as if the slap was real and not some ethereal reminiscence from decades past. The older he got, the more he wondered how much of his childhood recollections were simply created out of whole cloth to explain or rationalize his life, and what had become of it. ‘Life plays tricks, Billy boy. Keep your head screwed on tight and you’ll be just fine,’ he remembered his father saying, just before he twisted his head down onto his neck. Or so it appeared to Billy, who always squealed with delight at these antics, in spite of his mother’s disapproving glare. His mother was a joyless woman who was the opposite of Billy’s father in every way, and no one who knew the family well ever understood how the two ended up together.

“Ahh. No sense goin’ back over all that,” William said. He talked to himself all the time, no more conscious of it than others were of breathing. He was sometimes aware when people noticed it in public, but he rarely went out and so never developed a reason to discontinue the practice. He had never married, had no friends, but still yearned for discourse. People simply need to talk. So he conversed with himself, or sometimes the cat, but since she never answered he found that unsatisfying. The cat was just a habit now, and they stayed out of each other’s way more often than not. This one he’d never even bothered to name.  

William rolled over slowly, preparing to get out of bed. “That’s the difference when you get older. Everything takes preparation.” It took him longer and longer to get out of bed these days, but there was less and less need to actually do so. He smiled at the irony. That was another thing that became more prevalent as you age, he thought. Irony.

After a few moments, he swung his legs out of the bed and sat up.

*

Billy looked up at his father, who smiled and said, “Where’d it go?” The boy looked agog, mouth open almost as wide as his eyes.

His father threw his head back and laughed that big, exultant laugh he was known for, and withdrew his pocket-watch, chain and all, from Billy’s ear. Billy gasped and grabbed for the watch, which his father dangled just out of reach. He winked at Billy, and tousled his hair. “One day it’ll be yours, Billy boy.”

*

William hated going outside, and rarely did so except during his infrequent trips to buy groceries. This was planned with almost military precision for two reasons: One, he enjoyed having a purpose to pass the time, and two, because it delayed his exit to the outside world. But the pleasure he derived from the preparation never exceeded the pain he felt in its execution. This exemplified his entire life. The short time he had with his father never made up for the years with his mother, with whom he lived until her death much later. Age treated her well to the end, and William often imagined she might never die, but remain with the house like a bedrock foundation without which the structure would collapse. He had visualized the event so clearly that, after her death, he actually expected just that occurrence, and found himself sorely disappointed when it failed to happen. He welcomed his own death, and though he felt so since before he could remember, no longer expected it with any anticipation. The things he wanted were never attained, and he accepted this, because it was all he knew.

*

William looked down at his father’s body, rubbing his face where his mother had slapped him. He took hold of his father’s lapels, and straining mightily, inched the body into the hallway. His mother had hold of his father’s hands behind him. His father’s mouth was open, and William peered into its blackness until he thought he saw color. More than once a bead of his sweat dripped from his brow into the recess of that cavity, which didn’t bother William nearly as much as the sound he heard when the back of his father’s head bumped the floor. When he got tired, Billy released one lapel and quickly placed his hand underneath his father’s head, resting it on the cold floor as gently as possible. His mother waited patiently until Billy was able to continue, never releasing the hands of her husband. And then they would drag him a bit farther. After a while, Billy was able to keep his father’s head from touching. He hated the sound it made against the floor.

*

He heard the whispers at the grocery store, but paid them no mind. He supposed he was talked about at other times, but when in earshot it was like the buzz of a streetlight on a summer night. Such a small part of the background it was hardly noticeable. Besides, he had groceries to collect.

Most of the townspeople commented when William was about, if only because it was such a rare event. But even newcomers who hadn’t heard the stories usually made some remark about the little old man who pulled a child’s wagon and carried on both parts of such animated conversations. From a distance William looked quite dapper in his father’s three piece seer sucker, until proximity showed how filthy it was and how the arms and legs were rolled up to accommodate a much shorter man. William was the town mirage, not at all what he appeared to be at first glance.      

He occasionally reacted to the ancient chants of the neighborhood children outside his house. Some had taken to daring one another to sneak up to William’s front door and ring the bell, waiting until the porch light came on before fleeing in fright at the thought of Wee Willie pulling the offender inside, never to be seen again. The doorbell hadn’t worked for years, but William heard them regardless, and would flick the light on so that the children would finish their game. If it was a large group, he would sometimes sit for hours, flicking the switch on and off and even rattling the knob until they all had their turn, but never would he actually open the door. It had tapered off in the last several years as he grew older, but it never seemed to fade completely away, like a tideland connected to an ebbing sea. He never wondered what would happen if he simply ignored the children, or jiggled the knob without turning on the light, which might have been more frightening to them. William simply played his part as he always had.

*

Billy didn’t know why his mother insisted he drag his father from the bedroom, down the hall, through the kitchen, and into the parlor, but he was only nine, and didn’t question it. He was aware his father was dead, but death was not something he could comprehend. Had his father rose up and inquired about supper, Billy would have accepted that as simply as he had accepted his mother’s instructions to move the body from one end of the house to the other. Billy always did as he was told.

When the doctor arrived, he saw immediately there was nothing he could do. Billy’s father was lying on his back in the doorway between the kitchen and the parlor, and he was long dead. Neither the doctor, nor the sheriff, nor the undertaker looked in any other part of the house, especially not the back bedroom where the poor fellow had actually died. They listened to his mother, nodded in sympathy, and asked nothing more. Everyone simply accepted his mother’s version of things, and the testimony of the traumatized young boy was not required. He had been through enough.

Had anyone looked in the back bedroom that night, it is not at all certain they would have understood the significance of the strange display there. The doctor’s determination of cause of death would not have changed. He did note the lack of injury to the back of the man’s head, which he thought odd, considering, from the position of the body, he obviously fell backwards. But the doctor was not so troubled he gave it another thought after that day. Ironically, the care Billy took with his father as he dragged the body was the only hint something was not as had been described. Another irony was that Billy’s classmates, whom the adults assumed were merely displaying the cruelty of children, were actually closer to the truth than anyone realized. Perhaps only those so young can sense so well the pain of other children. Or perhaps Billy simply told them what actually happened. Regardless, the adults, as adults will do, ignored the wisdom of their young ones.

*

William put his groceries away, carefully arranging them until they were as they were supposed to be. It was nearly time for bed, and he was as always, glad for the day to end. He thought of each day as a task to be accomplished, and felt relieved when he could put another one behind him.

His bedtime ritual was performed as were all his tasks, precise but perfunctory. The last thing he did every night was to open his father’s pocket-watch. As it had been since he took possession, the hands were frozen at the time of his father’s death.

*

When Billy and his mother had finally gotten his father’s body to the parlor, they were both breathing heavily and drenched in sweat. When she caught her breath and picked up the phone, she noticed Billy digging through his father’s suit coat. She was not surprised.

*

Billy looked up at his father, who smiled and said, “Where’d it go?” The boy looked agog, mouth open almost as wide as his eyes.

His father threw his head back and laughed that big, exultant laugh he was known for, and withdrew his pocket-watch, chain and all, from Billy’s ear. Billy gasped and grabbed for the watch, which his father dangled just out of reach. He winked at Billy, and tousled his hair. “One day it’ll be yours, Billy boy.”

Billy suddenly looked sad. “What’s the matter, son?”

“Why do you have to go again?”

“It’s my job, Billy. Daddy has to sell things. All over the place.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“I’ll be back soon.”

“I want to go with you.”

“Billy, you have to stay here with your mother.”

“I don’t wanna. She-“

“What, son?”

Billy said nothing. His mother had told him something terrible would happen to his daddy if he ever told anyone.

“Nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” Billy said, glumly.

“I’ll try and come back early, okay?”

Billy brightened a bit. “Can I hold your watch for you?”

“Billy, I need my watch so I know what time it is.”

Billy frowned.

“Because then I’ll be able to come home sooner.”

He winked at his son, who finally smiled. But it was an odd little smile.

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“What if something happens to mommy?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if something happens to mommy while you’re gone?”

“Billy, nothing’s going to happen to your mother-“

“What if it does?” His tone was urgent now.

His father smiled reassuringly.

“Then I’d rush right home to take care of my favorite son of a gun.”

“Promise?” Billy’s odd smile was back.

“Ab-so-lutely!”

*

Billy waited in the dark, like always. Whenever his daddy went out of town, she made him sleep in the back bedroom. His mother didn’t want to ‘dirty’ the other rooms by punishing him there. He tried not to look at the assortment of things his mother used, but it was difficult. She always arranged them on the nightstand before bedtime, and he was expected to wait quietly until she came in, regardless of the hour.

When he heard footsteps in the hall, he tensed, anxious but eager. He didn’t want to sleep in the back bedroom anymore, so he had gone into his daddy’s closet that afternoon.

The door opened, and Billy raised his father’s gun.

His father, who had indeed come home early, decided he would sleep in the back so as not to wake up his wife and son. It was late, almost midnight, and he thought he might surprise them by rising early and making them breakfast.

When the silhouette appeared in the doorway, Billy fired.

*

He pulled the pocket-watch out of his father’s coat. The glass was cracked, and the hands were frozen at a few minutes to midnight. Billy knew it was later because he had heard the clock in the kitchen chime twelve when they stopped to rest by the icebox. That seemed like hours ago.

His mother hung up the phone and looked at him oddly, but said nothing as Billy tucked the watch into his pajamas.

*

A nor’easter blew in late, and in spite of the day’s exertion with the groceries, William woke up in the middle of the night from the cold. As he got out of bed to light the furnace he noticed an odd thing. His father’s pocket-watch read 3:25. The hands, stopped minutes to midnight for almost seventy years, were moving again.

William carried the watch with him into the basement, and lit the furnace pilot. It took him several tries because he could barely take his eyes off the watch. Had he not lived in the house for decades, he surely would have tripped on the stairs either on the way up or on the way down, so intent was his focus on the timepiece in his hands.

When he got upstairs, what he saw shocked him even more than the pocket-watch.

His father stood there, smiling broadly, seer sucker jacket over his arm.

Billy ran to him, burying his face in his daddy’s belly, hugging him so tightly his father joked he was squeezing the life out of him.

He took Billy’s hand, and led him outside, where a fresh blanket of snow had made everything new again.

William stepped off the porch, where a thousand children had taunted him, and collapsed face down in the peaceful drift, his smile literally frozen on his face. His midnight came minutes later, and he welcomed it with open arms. He was an ancient snow angel, home with his father at last.                                         

Children’s song, New England, c. 1937

Wee Willie Myers

Found his daddy’s gun

Pointed it and fired

Look out everyone

Tried to shoot his ma-ma

Hit his pops instead

Dragged him to the parlor

Now his daddy’s dead

How many minutes

to midnight when he’s through

Better run fast cause

Next he’ll come for you!

“I need an abortion.”

The girl behind the counter frowned at the old man, who looked like one of those ‘quiet desperation’ types who go unnoticed their entire lives until something snaps and they climb a tower with a Remington 700 and a suitcase full of magazines.

He blinked once behind thick, horned rimmed glasses that made his eyes look just a little too large and patiently waited for a response. Nah, he’s probably harmless.

She decided she must not have heard him correctly.

“Excuse me?”

The man sighed as if he’d been asked to recount the most boring event in his life for the umpteenth time.

“I need an abortion.”

“I see.”

She smiled tightly and looked around the empty room, hoping he’d offer more information without prompting, such as where the hell is your daughter, grand-daughter, or (god forbid) wife, who actually needed the services of the clinic. She looked up at the clock behind him. Almost five. Thank God.  

“There’s no one else,” he said softly.

“I’m sorry?”

“I didn’t bring anyone with me.”

“If you need information, we have some brochures that might-“

“No!”

The old man’s vehemence didn’t scare her so much as surprise her, yet Sandy still found herself wishing they had security guards or glass like those facilities in the red states.

“The abortion is for me. For me. For...”

His voice trailed off as if he was suddenly either really tired or really confused, and she relaxed once more. Maybe it’s Alzheimer’s or something.

Sandy reached for the phone as the old man dropped from view. She stood up and leaned over the counter. He’d fainted.

“Shit!” She dialed 911.

----------------------------------------

The paramedics began putting away their things. Sandy’s supervisor, Harriet Madison, looked on as primly as her three hundred plus pounds would allow.

“I guess that’s it,” the cute paramedic said, as his partner carried their kit out into the corridor. He winked at Sandy, who blushed and turned away so Harriet wouldn’t think she was flirting. Harriet had a stick up her ass as long as the river Nile.

“You’re not taking him?” Harriet asked, incredulous.

“Nothing wrong with him.”

The old guy chimed in. “I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

The cute paramedic turned his eyes from Sandy back to Harriet. “He doesn’t wanna go.”

Harriet grabbed the paramedic’s arm, who looked annoyed at the gesture. She led him across the room and whispered as they walked. Sandy turned to the old man, who looked almost as peeved as Harriet.

“Can I get you anything, mister-“

“I want a goddamn ABORTION!”

Sandy stepped back, surprised at the outburst. The cute paramedic and Harriet stopped talking and looked over.

After the briefest of pauses, Harriet continued her harangue as the paramedic rolled his eyes at Sandy, who let him know with a glance that she understood completely his desire to get the hell out of there as soon as possible, and sent back a look that said please please please take me with you when suddenly the little old man pulled down his pants and screamed, “I WANT A GODDAMNED ABORTION AND I WANT IT NOW!”

Everybody froze except the old man, who lifted his shirt tail to display a decided lump in his belly and a huge red scrotum the size of a tetherball, topped by thick grey thatch that probably hadn’t been trimmed since the Hoover administration.

Harriet stepped back onto the paramedic’s foot, who howled in pain.

Sandy squinted, not sure she was seeing right. It didn’t seem as if he had a penis. ‘Sure has a lot of balls, though,’ she thought, stifling laughter as Harriet regained her composure and barreled toward the old man.

“You cover yourself this instant!” she screamed, outraged spittle spraying the old man’s defiant face.

“What the fuck!” The cute paramedic limped over and nudged Harriet rudely aside.

He was staring at the old man’s crotch.

He kneeled down in front of the old guy, an action that made Sandy flinch for some reason, and parted the elderbush like he was peering out of a duck blind.

Harriet was about to let him have it for shoving her aside when she looked down to what the paramedic revealed in the old man’s crotch and promptly fainted.

-------------------------

The cute paramedic’s partner kneeled over Harriet and checked her vitals.

Sandy and the cute one helped the old man onto the couch across the lobby, where he suddenly began moaning loudly. There was a hole the size of a half dollar where his penis should be, and it was oozing a thick brownish-yellow fluid which bubbled slightly upon discharge. 

“Goddamn. Have you ever seen anything like that?”

Sandy just shook her head.

The cute paramedic gave her an admiring look. “I’m Jeff, by the way.”

“Sandy.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

“Thanks. Don’t you think you should-”

“How long you been working here?”

“Uh, Jeff.”

“Yeah?”

Jeff followed her eyes back to the old man and nearly fainted himself.

The lump in the old man’s stomach was rolling slowly, like waves lapping against a dock, and the lumpy fluid was keeping rhythm with the tide.

“Holy fuck!”

The old man moaned and opened his eyes.

“NOW can I have an abortion?”

---------------

Jeff and his partner Homer stood by the lobby door speaking in hushed tones as Sandy stood over the old man behind them, watching him like a train wreck. Harriet was abandoned unconscious on the floor by the counter.

The old man’s eyes fluttered and closed, and his breathing deepened.

“How much did you give him?” Jeff whispered.

“Enough to keep him out for awhile.”

Jeff shook his head. “I don’t like this. We shoulda taken him in.”

Homer laughed. “Are you kidding me? We need time to consider our options.”

“He needs to be in the hospital, man.”

“Dude, I checked his vitals. He’s as stable as you are.”

“I don’t know...”

“We’ll take him in. We’re just gonna spend a little extra time to prep him so my buddy can get here for a few pictures, and we’ll be good to go.”

Sandy, who had walked up unnoticed, piped in, “I’ve got a camera phone.”

Homer snorted. “I’m talking ten mega pixels. Dude’s gonna do it up right. Video, too.”

“Nice!” Sandy said loudly. Homer looked over at Harriet, who still hadn’t stirred.

Homer pulled Sandy roughly out into the hall, anyway.

Jeff grabbed her other arm. “Watch it, Homer.”

Homer let go of her arm, but demanded, “Are you cool?”

Sandy looked at Jeff, who shrugged apologetically.

“I’m cool.”

A big shit-eating grin spread across Homer’s face. “You better be. Because this is big. That’s some funky shit in there. And we found it. Us. Something maybe nobody’s ever seen before. You know what that means?”

Sandy shook her head slowly.

Homer’s smile faded, and he leaned in close.

“Youtube.”

-------------------------

Homer, Sandy, and Jeff marched over to the old man, who appeared to be in a deep sleep.

They all looked at the oozing netherlands for a moment, mesmerized.

“It’s hypnotic,” Jeff whispered to no one in particular.

Homer turned to Sandy. “Go lock the doors and keep an eye out for my buddy. He’ll be dressed like a UPS guy.”

Sandy looked at him quizzically. “Why is he dressed like a UPS guy?”

“Cause he is a UPS guy. He’s coming from work.”

“Oh.” Sandy went behind the counter and fished for the keys in her desk. Harriet still lay on the floor, her massive chest rising and falling slowly.

Jeff leaned over the old man, staring at the amazing belly roll and oozing penis-void.

Homer watched as Sandy struggled to lock the doors.

“I’ll do it.” Homer stormed over to the door and pushed her out of the way. He yanked the double doors together and tried unsuccessfully to engage the deadbolt.

Sandy smirked. “Not so easy, is it Homer?”

“Shut up. I can do it.”

As Sandy watched Homer struggle with the doors, Jeff felt his eyes melt into the rhythm of the rolling flesh on the old man’s stomach. It seemed to pulsate now, and his eyes grew big as saucers as he reached for the thing as in a trance.

At the doors, Homer gave a mighty turn while he lifted up on the door handles.

Jeff placed his hands on the old man’s belly.

Homer grunted as the deadbolt finally slid into the metal frame of the opposite door.

Jeff squeezed.

Homer smiled. “Got you, bitch.”

The old man screamed as his penis shot out of the void, its swollen head split apart like the end of an exploding cigar. Blood and brownish-yellow pus sprayed out like a geyser into Jeff’s face, knocking him backwards with such force he actually left the ground before collapsing in a heap against the far wall.

“My eyes! My eyes!”

Homer screamed at Sandy, “Get your fucking camera phone!”

Sandy, who had been about to run over to help Jeff, stood undecided in the middle of the room.

“Goddamnit, get the camera!”

Sandy ran behind the counter as Homer grabbed the old man’s penis in an attempt to cap the gusher until Sandy could take a picture.

“Hurry up! This shit burns!” Homer managed to get his hands on the old man’s open dickhead, but the blood and the bile were squirting through his fingers in all directions, sizzling against his skin.

Sandy finally found her phone but fumbled it under the desk. She dropped to her knees and grabbed it, bumping her head hard against bottom of the drawer on her way back up. “Fuck that hurt.”

When she stood up, she saw what real pain was.

Two dripping tentacles burst out of the old man’s scrotum and appeared to gouge out Homer’s eyes. But then spongy grey soup started flowing out of his head, and she realized whatever popped out of the old guy’s nut sack was actually sucking Homer’s brains out.

‘And he didn’t have much to begin with,’ she thought with a crazy laugh as her bowels released.

“Sandy, look out!”

Jeff had managed to get to his feet just as the thing dropped Homer’s lifeless body to the floor and pulled itself out of the old man’s scrotum, shaking like a wet dog and spraying the room with the old man’s amniotic ball-juice.

The blood burned like acid, but Sandy stood her ground and raised her camera phone toward the alien creature and snapped a one mega pixel picture as the flesh melted off her face in little patches.

“I got it! Wooooooooo!” Sandy screamed, and threw up across the counter.

The creature moved toward Sandy.

Jeff frantically looked around the room for something with which to attack the thing.

Sandy barfed again and the vomit pooled on the counter and dripped off the other side onto Harriet’s face.

The creature spit bile into Sandy’s eyes from across the room, blinding her, and then edged toward the counter.

Harriet stirred on the floor as Sandy’s puke dripped onto her mouth.

The creature hissed at Sandy.

Sandy screamed and froze in place as Jeff reached the far wall and smashed the glass covering the firebox.

Harriet rolled onto her hands and knees and added to the vomit on the floor, blindly reaching for the counter overhang to help herself up.

The thing rocked back, as if preparing to jump.

Harriet managed to stand, facing the petrified Sandy.

Jeff pulled the axe from the firebox and whirled around, his eyes still burning from alien pus.

Harriet wiped her eyes and looked at Sandy, who stared past her at the creature, which was crouched and about to pounce. “What the FUCK happened to you?”

Sandy screamed.

The creature pounced.

Jeff threw the axe.

Harriet fell.

Onto the creature.

Axe in her back.

The antennae wiggled from under the fat woman’s body for a moment, and then stopped moving.

Jeff limped his way behind the counter, and Sandy fell into his arms, weeping.

After a moment they looked into each other’s eyes, and in spite of the blood and the pus and the bile and the shit and the vomit and the tears and the amniotic scrotum-juice, they knew what they were supposed to do.

But just before their lips met, they heard a groan from the old man on the couch.

They made their way over to the bloody mess. He was barely alive, and trying to speak.

Sandy leaned down and put her ear to the old man’s cracked and bleeding lips.

She felt a low rumble as he whispered:

“Twins.”

He stood over her, nervously tapping the knife against his leg. His breathing was raspy and shallow. It seemed impossible she didn’t hear him, but there she lay, sleeping soundly with that noisy half snore he’d put up with for ten years as of next week.

Jesus. Ten insufferable years.

The light from the hall glinted off the knife and flickered across her face.

She always had to have a light on to go to sleep. He’d put up with that, too. At least he’d

broken her of keeping the TV on. That only took six years.

And that nasty, irritating laugh. Did anything piss him off more than that?

What bothered him now had endeared him early on. Is that the way all marriages were, he wondered? Was what he’d considered to be cute and funny in the beginning now actually driving him to kill her?

“Jack!”

Shit. He was so close.

“Just a minute!” He clicked save to make sure she didn’t rush in the room and yank the cord out of the wall like last time.

“Come to bed! It’s three o’clock in the fucking morning!”

“All right!” The clock on the toolbar said 2:53. Lying bitch.

“Now!”

“All right, I said!” Fuck. He hated to stop when it was flowing. And he was almost finished, too.  He’d really wanted to post the thing tonight. Maybe get some feedback. He shut down the computer, and swiveled in his chair.

Deb was standing there, in a thin t-shirt and panties, looking extremely pissed. Her arms were crossed, which made her tits look delicious. He eyed her nipples, erect through thin cotton.

“Were you on that fucking web site again?”

She was always oblivious when he ogled her, which had been rare of late, he’d have to admit. Lots of pressure at work.

He raised his eyes to hers.

“No,” he lied.

“Fuck you!”

She turned and stormed out, her ass jiggling angrily after her. He stood up, rubbing his

dick through his shorts. By the time he hit the doorway, he had a blue veiner between his legs and a real desire to use it. Good writing always made him horny.

And apparently, anger did the same for Deb. Or else she’d noticed him ogling her after all.

As soon as he hit the bed she was on him. She grabbed his cock in both hands and kissed him forcefully, immediately sucking his tongue hard the way she did when she got wet. Or maybe that was what made her wet. He didn’t know and he didn’t care. He just pulled down his shorts.

She rolled over and straddled him, pulling aside her thong and sliding onto him in one motion. She was on fire. They hadn’t made love in months, and it was as if she’d finally tired of all his late nights at the office and bullshit excuses and decided to just take him.

She pulled her legs in and squatted over him like an animal, pounding her ass against his thighs so hard he was amazed he stayed inside her. He pushed her shirt up over her tits, groping more roughly than she usually allowed.

Her long hair hung in his face, annoying him, and if he could have seen her eyes, he would have seen they were closed, which would have annoyed him, too. He really liked to see the eyes.

Jesus, he thought, that’s something when even during a wild fuck like this, I’m thinking of things that bother me.

But the thought passed when her hands clenched his chest hair painfully and he knew she was about to climax.

He sat up, grabbing her ass in both hands and rubbing his pelvis roughly against hers. She thrust her hips in short bursts, working with him. His mouth found her nipple, biting and sucking as she ground him down.

They came together, which hadn’t happened in ages, and he kept his mouth on her breast as their movements gradually slowed. He could hardly breathe, and the bed was damp with sweat.

When they stopped moving and he finally raised his eyes, he saw no affection in hers. She just looked at him dispassionately, and slowly pulled away until his cock slipped out, and pulled her shirt down. They fell asleep back to back, neither having spoken a word since they got in bed. At least there was no arguing, he thought. That was one of the reasons he didn’t fuck her, anymore. Being a bitch really turned him off.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Deb sat in the break room, talking to Connie. Connie was at least twenty years older, and always got a kick out of the younger girls and their relationships. She’d been married five times so far, and they always needed her advice. What they didn’t know about men.

“So I just fucked him. Didn’t say a word. Just hopped him like a goddamn freight train, I was so pissed.”

“Jesus, honey.”

“And it felt good.”

“I guess it did. What were you so pissed about?”

“He’s been working late all the time, says they’re riding him-“

“Like you were riding him?”

“Whatever. He’s been pulling overtime for months, always tired and stressed out. Then when he gets home, he just sits at the computer. So last night, he finally gets off early-“

“Like you got off ?” Connie smiled.

“Jesus Christ, can I finish the story?” Sometimes she was really irritating.

Connie raised her hands, ‘well excuuuuuse me.’

“He’s finally home at a decent hour from his low paying, piece of shit job-“

“I thought you said he was pulling overtime?”

“Goddamn!” She just looked at Connie’s stupid open mouth for a moment and considered giving her a wedgie from the inside, but instead, said with deadly patience:

“Even with the overtime he doesn’t make shit. They passed two guys ahead of him, which means he’ll probably never get a promotion. That’s why I gotta work this shit job instead of goin’ back to school.”

Deb realized she had just insulted Connie, but she didn’t care and the stupid bitch didn’t even seem to notice.

 “Anyway, he finally gets home before ten and what does he do? He sits at the computer all night, on this stupid web site. Thinks he’s fucking Ernest Hemingway.”

“Ernest Hemingway?”

“Yeah, it’s for beginning writers, or something. Says he’s trying to write a short story. But it’s got, like, chat rooms and shit, too. Bunch of fucking morons.”

“Chat rooms?” Connie perked up. She’d heard all about those on Oprah.

“Maybe he’s having sex in there.”

“No, Con, it’s on the computer. The internet.”

“So what? People meet people like that all the time. How do you know he doesn’t have something going on? I mean, he works late all the time, never fucks you anymore. Maybe he met someone,” said Connie, arching her eyebrows.

Deb just sighed. Why do I even talk to her, she thought.

Connie just smiled. These girls. I’m like a mother to ‘em.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------He stood over her, nervously tapping the knife against his leg. His breathing was raspy and shallow.

Jack leaned back in his chair and stared at the monitor.

No, I should change that, he thought. Too much blood to clean up. How else could he kill her?

He looked up and saw his boss approaching with something behind his back. Jack quickly turned off his monitor.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Deb came home early. She went straight for the computer. Fucking chat rooms, my ass, she thought.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The boss called everyone over and made them listen to his speech. Jack just leaned back in amazement. Never saw THAT coming.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He stood over her, nervously tapping the knife against his leg. His breathing was raspy and shallow. It seemed impossible she didn’t hear him, but there she lay, sleeping soundly with that noisy half snore he’d put up with for ten years as of next week.

Jesus. Ten insufferable tears. 

The light from the hall glinted off the knife and flickered across her face.

She always had to have a light on to go to sleep. He’d put up with that, too. At least he’d broken her of keeping the TV on. That only took six years.

And that nasty, irritating laugh. Did anything piss him off more than that?

What bothered him now had endeared him early on. Is that the way all marriages were, he wondered? Was what he’d considered to be cute and funny in the beginning now actually driving him to kill her?

Deb sat at the computer, fuming. What kind of bullshit was this? Noisy snoring? Nasty laugh? Ten insufferable years?

“I’ll show you insufferable, dipshit.”

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Jack drove with a huge smile on his face. He reached over and hefted the plaque. Good quality, too. Heavy. He couldn’t believe it. A promotion AND a bonus! Can’t wait to tell Deb, he thought. Things are really going to change. No more late nights. Twice the pay. She can go back to school. And on top of that, I finished the story. My first post!

He looked at his watch and debated calling Deb to tell her he was coming home early versus surprising her with the good news. After a moment, he picked up his cell phone. She didn’t really like surprises, and everything was going so well he decided to just play it safe and let her know.

But she didn’t answer, and it went straight to voicemail. He sighed. He didn’t want to leave it on the machine. Oh, well. I’ll just give her a taste, he thought.

After he hung up, he felt practically giddy.

I’ll probably get laid again tonight. Sex drive’s back with a vengeance.

He looked down at the plaque. Deb’s gonna die.

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Deb read the story again, so engrossed she was unaware of the phone ringing in the other room. That son of a bitch, she thought. I could fucking kill him.

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Jack burst into the house, carrying the plaque. The house was quiet. He rushed into the bedroom.

No Deb.

He went into the den, smiling broadly, holding the plaque out for her to see.

She was still sitting at the computer, reading his story.

“Hey Deb, did you get my- what’s going on?”

She sat there with her back to him.

“You asshole.”

She swiveled around in the chair, ready to let him have it with both barrels, but when she saw what he was holding, her eyes grew wide. And then she laughed.

That nasty, irritating laugh.

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The two detectives watched through the one-way mirror as Jack signed the confession.

“Why do you think he did it?”

“Who the fuck knows? If every guy who thought of offing his wife actually followed through, holy fuck. Overtime city.”

“No, dummy. I mean why would he write a story about it before he did her?”

“Oh, that. I dunno. Guy’s a putz. What about that fucking voicemail?”

“Huh?”

“You didn’t hear it?”

“No.”

“Dipshit left her a voicemail as he’s driving home. Says ‘You’re gonna die,’ and hangs up. Premeditation, baby.”

“Stupid ass.”

“No shit. No voicemail, heat of passion.”

“Manslaughter, out in ten.”

“Shit. Five.”     

“Kinda funny, though.”

“What?”

“Murder weapon.”

“I guess.”

“Story was pretty good, too.”

The other detective just snorts. “Fucking Ernest Hemingway.”

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He stood over her, holding his employee of the year plaque. His breathing was raspy and shallow. It seemed impossible she didn’t hear him, but there she lay, sleeping soundly with that noisy half snore he’d put up with for ten years as of next week.

Jesus. Ten insufferable years.

The light from the hall glinted off the plaque and flickered across her face.

She always had to have a light on to go to sleep. He’d put up with that, too. At least he’d broken her of keeping the TV on. That only took six years.

And that nasty, irritating laugh. Did anything piss him off more than that?

What bothered him now had endeared him early on. Is that the way all marriages were, he wondered? Was what he’d considered to be cute and funny in the beginning now actually driving him to kill her?

“Jack!”

He brought the plaque down hard.

Jimmy Cuntlips sneezed, and most of his nose hit the windshield with a dull splat and slid to the dashboard, leaving a chunky red trail down the glass and a hole the size of a Sacawega just below his eyes. 

“Nyee-zus Cryce Cunny, for da las’ sime, wash da vuggin’ armorall!”

Phil the Retard, with that goddamn cleft palate, was about to let loose with another unintelligible tirade, so Jackie scooched over as far as he could in the back seat and tried to make himself small.

Being  a grave high and well on his way to a  deuce and a half ever since Pam left him for that dyke from Jersey, this would have been a neat trick alone in his Lincoln, but it was fucking impossible in this clown car with half the eastside captains in tow.

Man, he missed that car. Goddamn Iran II. Shoulda finished it the first time. What good’s a war when you gotta do it all again in twenty years?

And why the fuck Phil insisted on a sit with the goddamn flu raging was beyond his comprehension, but Jackie wasn’t recruited for his brains, so he mostly just shut up about it.

At least I got sense enough to hold my nose when I sneeze, he thought, and wondered when he was gonna come down with full blown Fifty-one-fifty, or whatever the fuck they were calling it now. He vaguely remembered there were some letters after, but he preferred Captain Tripps, like in that book his mother used to read to him before they started burning them again. King-something. Christ, that seemed like three lifetimes ago. King Stevens! Now he remembered. 

“That was a good fuckin’ book,” he said, and immediately realized he was speaking his thoughts again. “Shit!” Goddamnit, I did it again, he thought. Jesus, this virus is trippy. Hey! Maybe that’s where Stevens go it.

“Nyackie! Whad a fuck aw you awgin abow?” Phil stopped screaming at Jimmy and turned his attention to the back seat.

“Nothin’ Phil. Just thinkin’.” God-damn I hate this job.

“Aye don may ou da dink!”

“Right, boss.”

Phil gave him the evil eye in the rear view until Jimmy suddenly swerved across the center divider reaching for his nose, which had slid way down in the center defrost.

Jimmy got both hands back on the wheel just in time and righted the Prius, avoiding a head on with a hydrogen van, and Phil got off Jackie, which was worth a near miss any day. That Cuntlips sure was dumb. Nothin’ like a bigger moron than you to take the heat off.

“Wadge da fungin’ road, midge!”

Sammy the Shoe, whose wife was named Midge before he dismembered her, let out a giggle next to Jackie.

Hoo boy, here it comes, asshole. Sucks to be you, noob. Sammy only got promoted a week ago, and that was only because Carmine the Cunt (no relation to our nose-less driver) lost his legs in an industrial waste non-accident last week after scoring a steal from the Corelli Brothers, who were none too pleased and with whom we would soon sit. When Carmine dragged himself outta the sludge with his powerful arms, he left a trail of slime that was just like that old joke about why women have legs, and who says poetry is dead?

“You ding dats vunny? Mig ub nat nose!”

Sammy stopped giggling, and frantically looked around for a napkin, a paper towel, the Times, anything to keep from touching that mucous-y mess that was, until recently, hanging right above that stupid mustache Jimmy Cuntlips grew to cover up, what else, his cunt-y lips.

Jimmy’d caught the flu before anyone, hell, he probably originated the motherfucker from all that shit he used to eat, and his mouth had turned sideways, somehow. He used to have a goatee, too. It was pretty fucking funny at the time, but nobody laughed anymore. All joked out. Still, you had to feel sorry for the poor, dumb sonuvabitch. He was down to maybe ninety and shit was always fallin’ off him. Fuck it. He was an asshole, anyway.

“Mig id ub!”  Philly was starting to turn purple.

Sammy looked at Jackie, who just shook his head and transferred his handkerchief from the top pocket of the double breasted to the inside of his coat. He liked to accessorize, and no way was this nasty motherfucker chillin’ his look to claim that dying prick’s nose, no matter what Phil said.

You can only push a man with style so far.

Nose wasn’t gonna stay on anyway. Once it blows, it goes.

“Mig ub nat nose, midge!”

Sammy, right in the middle of a dirty look at Jackie over the monogram, damn near got the giggles again because of that cut up slut of a wife, and Jackie almost hoped he did.

This crew was all stupid bastards, or just bastards, and Jackie was sorry he ever came in from Vegas as a favor to Brando.

Brando was starting to get on his nerves, anyway, with all that playacting shit he insisted on because of some fat-assed actor from the second stone age, so Jackie thought it might be a fine time to get out of Dodge. Boy, was he wrong.

The virus hit almost as soon as he got here.

Everyone back on the left coast was fine. Who knew all that nuclear waste buried up and down the Nevada coast would kill the virus? Just go to the domed beaches and dig up your meds. They’re practically bathing in the shit. Jesus. And now the fucking wall’s up, and Jackie was gonna have a helluva time getting back through.

Maybe the shit’ll mutate. Somebody’ll have to re-infect ‘em. Even the odds. Jackie smiled at the thought, and almost didn’t catch Sammy’s hand reaching into his coat.

He grabbed his wrist, and briefly considered snapping it as he looked from Sammy’s pleading eyes to Phil’s crazy ones. What the hell.

“Just don’t reach in, asswipe.”

He gave his handkerchief to Sammy, who proceeded to practically wipe his ass across Jackie’s face trying to grab the nose on the dashboard from the backseat. God-damn, I miss my Lincoln, Jackie thought.

While Sammy skated with the slippery schnozz and tried not to giggle every time Phil screamed “Mig ub nat nose, midge”, which was like, every three seconds, Jackie looked out the window at the barren landscape. Christ, what a fuck up the human race turned out to be.

They passed a pork wagon going in the other direction, and the driver actually waved at them. Jackie hated cops even though he was born long after the Scagnetti Wars that finally settled everything. Must be in the genes. Toddle-oo to you, too, motherfucker. 

Sammy finally had to cup the nose with one hand and stick a finger in the nostril with his other to get control of the damn thing. You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose…

“Got you Midge!” he screamed, and the whole fucking car went quiet.

Phil just looked at Sammy with that goddamn evil eye, and Jackie braced for the worst. Phil went berserk when anyone made fun of his cleft palate, even though Sammy wasn’t. Jackie just hoped he didn’t get any on his jacket.

Phil grabbed Sammy by the ears, and pulled his face in close, like he was gonna either kiss him or eat him. Funny if it was both, thought Jackie, and he briefly panicked until he realized he hadn’t said that out loud. Sammy shut his eyes, trembling, and either farted or shat.

Jackie couldn’t tell which.

For about two seconds.

Jesus, I hate this fuckin’ job.

Phil opened his mouth, and started laughing. No one had ever heard him laugh before, so it was almost scarier that anything else. It was a hoarse, explosive laugh, like the bray of a breathless jackass, which, Jackie thought, was rather apt.

Sammy opened his eyes and you could tell he was terrified, but too mesmerized by Phil’s laughter to look away. Even Jackie was staring.

Then Phil started coughing, a real hacking, wretching type of cough that sounded like his intestines were coming up.

Which is kinda what happened.

Phil was still holding Sammy in close when this really thick, violent stream of something not quite liquid and not quite solid flew out of his mouth and into Sammy’s face.

Sammy dropped Cunty’s nose and started clawing at Phil, who seemed to be laughing, coughing, and throwing up all at the same time.

It was like a living thing, a bile snake straight from Philly’s guts, and Jackie couldn’t turn away, even when foul splatter hit his $40,000 suit.

Sammy was trying to pry Phil off and Jimmy Cuntlips was screaming “My nose, my nose, you dropped my fuckin’ nose” when Phil pulled Sammy even closer and Jackie thought, Jesus, he really is gonna kiss him. But Phil’s head struck like a cobra only without the recoil, and he bit into Sammy’s nose and started shaking his head like a dog in a rawhide tug of war.

As Jackie sat there stunned, Cunty swerved around the road and Sammy puked up his breakfast, lunch, and a good deal of blood before passing out with Phil still gnawing his face as if it was his last meal.

The car came to a stop against the guardrail just as Phil finally bit through the last piece of sinewy flesh holding Sammy’s nose to his face.

And then the motherfucker swallowed it.

Phil sat back in the passenger seat and casually straightened his tie. He was covered with more gore than Jackie had never seen all at once, and that was saying a lot.

“Les ged goin.”

Cunty just looked at Phil like he’d eaten his life savings. Probably wanted Sammy’s schnozz for a spare. Strings of bloody snot drew in and out of his nose-void with each raspy breath. But he couldn’t take the evil eye, so he started the car.

The smell of shit and blood and vomit and everything else was starting to get to him, so Jackie rolled the window down and stuck his head out. At least nobody jerked off.

It always stunk to high heaven in these tollway tubes. They were supposed to have ventilation systems so you could breathe if your car broke down or something but Jackie could never take more than a few seconds of the stale, noxious air in the protective tunnels. But it was nice, once in a while, to lose one glass barrier and get that much closer to the outside. 

It’s funny, he thought. Even through the grimy wall of the tube, the outside still looks good. Makes you want to walk around out there. Barren, sure, but at least there’s a little dirt to remind you of the old days. But stay too long and they’d bury you in it.

One of those baby roaches, a three footer, suddenly climbed up the car door and stuck his antennae inside. Probably got on when we stopped. Jackie swatted it away and put up the window. Those things were disgusting, but you just can’t get rid of them. 

Jackie looked down at the Sammy-mist on his suit, and sighed. It was gonna be another long fuckin’ day, he just knew it.

None of the other patients noticed the child killer react as the new doctor entered lock down, awkwardly swiping his key card and shouldering open the heavy door as the electronic bolt disengaged.

One of the nurses thought she saw something, but was distracted when the bemused guard grabbed the door, saving Dr. Blaine the embarrassment of being hit on the head as he kneeled to pick up the case files he’d dropped onto the floor.

Been twenty years they say, thought the nurse, probably just my imagination. And when she rushed over to help the handsome doctor pick up his folders, she had forgotten all about the flash of cognition in the pale blue eyes of the catatonic patient sitting in front of the television.

But it was there.

Had she not been so mesmerized by the new doctor, who looked more like the creation of a Hollywood screenwriter than someone who knew his way around a psyche ward, she would have remembered to immediately report that particular patient’s reaction, however slight.

That was a standing order.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blaine’s first day went rather slowly. Conducting his initial interviews with the patients of C ward, he couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Garden variety bi-polars, schizophrenics, and several mental disorders so minor he wondered why the guard was armed and the doors were locked.

Send them home with prescriptions and outpatient access, he thought. Put myself out of a job and piss off the courts all at the same time. He smiled ruefully. I could always go back to bartending.

Nurse Renault interrupted his reverie. “That’s a strange little smile.” And then she gave him one that was not strange at all. Could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When he got to the last case file, Renault stood up and closed her notebook.

“One more,” Blaine said, looking down. “Lund.”

“Lund hasn’t spoken for twenty years. Why bother?”

Something in her manner irritated Blaine, and he opened the thick file.

After a moment, he raised his eyebrows, and looked at Renault.

“Child murderer?”

She nodded. “You wouldn’t know it to look at her.”

Blaine turned towards the pretty blonde woman sitting motionless in front of the television.

“That’s all she does.” Renault noticed Blaine’s reaction. Men are all alike, she thought.

“She’s not going to talk to you. The only thing she reacts to is that-“

“Jesus Christ. It says here she was twelve.” Blaine was back in the file.

“And now she’s thirty-one, and she still isn’t going to talk to you.” Renault was irritated now. Every male doctor that came through here was fascinated by Lund, and nobody could tell her it was just the killing. She was too good looking. But the murders were quite a story, she had to admit.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  

Blaine was indeed fascinated by Lund. According to her file, it happened on the day she graduated from middle school. Once her parents were asleep, she snuck downstairs, locked the double cylinder deadbolt using the key she carried around her neck, and calmly lit the porch on fire, watching from across the street as her family perished.

And she never spoke again.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blaine turned off the television. Nurse Renault started to say something, but to her surprise, the woman did not react at all to this normally egregious act.

Her pale blue eyes stared into his, pupils large. Blaine moved the penlight from side to side, yet still she stared straight ahead.

Half an hour and several simple tests later, there was still no response.

Renault sighed loudly behind him. Blaine, annoyed, gave up. He thanked the patient for her time, which the nurse found highly comical, so just to amuse her further, he took the woman’s limp hand warmly in his own and leaned in close.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do. I’m here to help.” Then Blaine stood up to leave.

Had he not dropped his pen light at that moment and knelt to retrieve it, he might not have seen, as he rose, the tear squeeze out of the woman’s eye and roll down her cheek.

And he might never have begun the sequence of events that would change both of their lives forever.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next morning, Blaine, who had not yet actually met his direct supervisor, sat across from Dr. Strasser, who looked back at him like he was crazy.

“You just got here, Doctor. This is a low rung, trust me. Don’t make waves, and if you’re lucky you’ll pass through quickly.”

“I know what I saw. What I felt.”

“What you felt? Your feelings are the basis for this meeting?” Blaine held his gaze in spite of his boss’s incredulous tone.

Strasser shifted his attention to a slightly sheepish Nurse Renault standing behind him.

“You saw this?”

Renault shrugged. “It could’ve been something irritating her eye.”

Blaine turned towards her. “She cried! You saw it!”

Renault bristled. “Her eye watered-”

“That’s not what you said before-“

“All right.” Strasser looked supremely irritated. “Just because you saw a tear, it doesn’t mean she connected with you.”

“I spent all night with her file. Plus the old ones, all the way back to when she was admitted. There has never been, in twenty years, a notation of anything like-“

“You read her entire file?”

“Yes.”

“Spent all night with it, did you?”

“Yes, and-“

“So you took it home.”

“Yes, I-“ and Blaine stopped. There was a smug look on Strasser’s face.

He exchanged a knowing glance with Renault behind Blaine’s back.

The older man leaned forward, his smile becoming even more smug, if that was possible.

“I’ll keep that out of your permanent record.”

“I know we’re not supposed to remove files, but-“

“You listen to me. I’m not sure what you think you’re going to accomplish that numerous others, myself included, haven’t been able to with this patient, but she’s been in a semi-catatonic state for twenty years.

The staff is trained to recognize any signs of cognition. Any. The fact you stirred up some dust groveling on the floor in front of her doesn’t make you the second coming of Jesus Christ. Doctor.”

Blaine turned to look at Nurse Renault, who shrugged. What a bitch, he thought.

“Feelings. Helluva first day, Dr. Zhivago,” Strasser deadpanned. “Dismissed.”

Blaine sullenly walked to the door.

“By the way,” Strasser said, as Blaine turned in the doorway. “She’s here for life, you know. Tried as an adult. Doesn’t matter if she rises up and recites the complete works of William Shakespeare. Concentrate on the ones you can help.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After the humiliation in Strasser’s office, Blaine never mentioned her case to anyone again. But he started finding excuses for staying late. Once the day staff was gone, he would follow the same routine. He’d walk over and casually turn off the black and white television she sat in front of every day, and have a seat next to her, facing the blank screen.

And he would talk.

About his life, his hopes, his dreams, almost anything. Like a psychologist who silently guides her patients to heal themselves, she had a profoundly emotional effect on him.

As time passed, he began to look forward to the last part of his workday so much he became deeply depressed if anything came up to keep him from her.

He actually came to believe he knew her. He thought if he could just get her to respond, in some small way, he might even love her. It was crazy, he knew. But there it was.

Then near the end of a day not unlike the summer evening all those years ago that put her here, something changed.

She reached out and touched his hand.

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What followed was a blur. She did not speak, but he felt her squeeze his hand, or at least he imagined she did. He had only minutes before the night orderly, a kind fellow named Laszlo, would come to put her to bed. Laszlo was used to Blaine by now, and thought of him as rather courageous, a doctor trying in vain to break through the wall of catatonia and connect with a hopeless patient.

Blaine couldn’t sleep that night. He wanted to go back to the hospital. Every hour he rose intending to do so, and once even made it outside to his car before better judgment prevailed and he returned to bed, only to repeat the action several more times before morning.

The next night, for the first time in twenty years, she spoke.

The story she told made him love her all the more.

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Her parents were alcoholics, abusive to each other and their two children. Her father began molesting her when she was nine, something her mother surely knew.

But that school year had been her best. She was bright, and a favorite of every teacher, always volunteering to stay late to help with whatever tasks needed completing.

More importantly, her father seemed to have lost interest in visiting her bedroom late at night.

So she walked home that day with a mixture of fear and happiness. Fear that with school out for the summer, there were more opportunities for abuse. But happiness because she carried home with her that day something new. Something she had never before possessed.

She carried hope.

The last day of school that year fell on her younger brother’s ninth birthday, and when she arrived home, she discovered why her father had lost interest in her.

And the hope she had finally allowed herself on the long walk home was extinguished, replaced by guilt and shame.

Somehow, this was her fault. And with all the resolve a twelve year old could muster, she decided to make things right. She didn’t know how, but she would think of something.

She made arrangements for her little brother to spend the night at a neighbor’s house. The neighbor thought it odd, but knew of her parents’ drinking, and questioned her closely. All the girl would say was that her little brother mustn’t be in the house that night. This conversation, when recounted in court, indicated premeditation.

Having situated her younger brother across the street, she walked to a nearby playground and stayed there until long past dark. She just couldn’t face eating dinner with her parents, not this night. When she finally came home, she went straight up to her bedroom, and lay staring at the ceiling, wondering what she would do.

She did not remember anything else that night, but was convinced she had indeed set the fire, because that’s what everyone told her. Blaine argued with her about that. To a child, a lie told many times becomes the truth, he said.

As the fire raged, she sat on the curb in front of the nice neighbor’s house, a literal buffer between her younger brother and the horror that was her parents.

She had no way of knowing that while she had waited on the dark playground earlier that night, her brother had become frightened, and insisted on sleeping in his own bed.

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Since she had no family, the court appointed a conservator to look out for her interests. It was convenient that her court appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Strasser, was willing to serve in both capacities.

The estate was fairly large, so he hired the best defense attorney money could buy. Blaine suspected he was in cahoots with Strasser, because while a twelve year old could legally be tried as an adult in this state, it was the only such case Blaine could find of one so young, and certainly a good lawyer would have fought harder against it.

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He decided to run away with her the first night they spoke. She begged him to wait, to find a proper way out, but he was not about to leave things to the legal system that had failed her so miserably. He had keys, after all. It was simply a matter of timing. The patients were locked in their rooms at night, so the security guard could make rounds of the entire facility. And Blaine had access to narcotics, so it would be a fairly simple matter to drug the orderly’s coffee. Laszlo was the last barrier between them and freedom.

The following day, Blaine called in sick. He scraped together every cent he could muster.

He went to the hospital later that evening, and just as he suspected, Laszlo’s admiration was easily manipulated.

They escaped quickly, and drove all night, crossing the Mexican border the following afternoon.

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They held hands and walked along the beach as the sun set, and she felt true happiness for the first time in her life.

Letting go of her burden after so many years, she thought she might actually float away if he stopped holding her. So he promised he never would.

They talked for hours, and made love as waves crashed on rocky shores.

He was her first that counted, and it was overwhelming.

It was the perfect ending to a perfect story.

It was everything she’d dreamed of.

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None of the other patients noticed the pretty blonde woman’s reaction as the new doctor entered lock down, swiping his key card and carrying an armload of case files.

One of the nurses thought she saw her eyes move in that direction, but ascribed it to her imagination. The new doctor was kinda cute. Maybe the child killer dug the hotties, she thought, amused at the idea. She saw the movie was ending, so she’d better re-start it. It seemed to keep her happy.

The nurse located the remote, pointed it over the shoulder of the catatonic woman sitting in front of the television, and pressed play.

Casablanca started from the beginning, and the nurse watched for a moment. She had seen it in bits and pieces ever since she started here. That was all the woman ever watched.

Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine, Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund. The nurse could name all the characters from the opening credits because once the DVD player jammed and the woman had had a fit till it was re-started. Now she watched the first few minutes to make sure it would play. Victor Laszlo, Captain Reynault, Major Strasser. She wished she could just sit down and watch the whole movie sometime.

The nurse put away the remote, wondering what went on behind the woman’s eyes as she watched the same movie over and over.

Maybe it comforts her, she thought. The familiarity.

There’s just no telling. Who knows if she’s even aware of what she’s watching?

But she’d heard it was a beautiful love story.

Now that the woman was taken care of for awhile, the nurse hurried over to meet the new doctor. It had been a long time since they’d had a new one, especially one so handsome.

Pale blue eyes followed her, blinking back a single tear.

He was everything she’d dreamed of.

He entered through the front, taking care to catch the screen door before it slammed. He did not want to announce his arrival. Glancing quickly up and down the street for nosy neighbors, he gently closed the inside door.

He was exceptionally quiet.

At the exact moment the latch caught, he heard a noise from the kitchen.

He ducked to the floor next a small wooden table in the sitting room, which provided very little actual cover. He was, however, very good at disappearing into small places.

He silently cursed his luck. He had given her ample time, or so he thought, to put her groceries away after following her home, and was hoping to slip in and do his business while she showered and changed, as was her practice. He had been watching her for weeks, timing her every action.

He heard a refrigerator open and close, and the sound of water running.

He considered calling the whole thing off, and returning another day.

Suddenly, the woman left the kitchen, and he watched as she passed through the large entry on her way to the back of the house.

She was very tall, very blonde, and very sexy. She wore a very short skirt, very high heels, and a very low cut blouse with no bra.

Everything about her was very.

His eyes followed her down the hall. He realized his dick was hard, and he rubbed it through his pants.

This could get interesting, he thought, and moved quickly towards the kitchen.

Water was heating on the stove, and pasta, tomatoes and mushrooms were laid neatly on the counter by the sink.

He ducked into an alcove on the far side of the kitchen, and crouched low next to a washer dryer. He heard footsteps in the hall, and then the sound of her entering the kitchen. He peered out to see she had not changed.

His eyes scoured her body from her high heels, up her shapely legs, and past her ass, which he imagined was covered by only the barest of materials, to finally rest on her lovely white neck. He really wanted to touch that neck.

He made a decision, and the thought of what he was going to do made his cock throb.

He was totally into it now, excited by the sudden change of plans.

He watched her like an animal, waiting for the right moment.

She took off her right earring, and started to remove the other when she dropped the first one on the floor. She bent down to pick it up, and he caught a glimpse of her white panties.

He sprang, taking her from behind. Her earrings rattled across the floor.

He cupped his elbow against her shoulder, and firmly covered her mouth with his hand, forcing his middle finger past her lips. He liked the soft wetness of her tongue against the calloused skin of his fuck finger. Her mouth felt like a vagina. He slid his other hand under her skirt, groping her pussy through her panties.

She gasped and he forced two more fingers into her mouth. He pulled her hard against his body, his left hand still gripping her cunt. He slid a finger inside her panties and brushed it across her pussy.

“Don’t move, and you won’t get hurt,” he whispered hoarsely, his lips brushing her ringless ear.

His fingers probed her mouth, as his other hand groped between her legs.

He found her cunt, and pushed a finger inside her.

She jerked against him and bit down on his fingers.

He spun her around, pivoting his body with hers, and pushed her towards the sink. She reached out to brace herself against the counter.

He yanked her hips hard against his own and pushed his hard cock against her ass. She gasped at the feel of his erection.

She struggled some more, and he wrapped his arms around her tightly, groping her tits and pinning her with his muscular forearms.

He put his hand on her neck. “Don’t make a fucking sound,” he said in a raw whisper. “Just do as I say.”

She relaxed slightly, and he moved his right arm around her waist. His right hand cupped her breast, kneading it through her shirt. Her nipple grew hard and his breath grew hot.

His other hand went urgently down to his pants. He unzipped and pulled out his cock.

He put his other hand inside her blouse, roughly squeezing her soft breast and pinching her nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

She moaned, and he guided his cock up under her tiny skirt, rubbing it against the small of her back.

He bit her shoulder as he used the head of his cock to pull her panties down below her cheeks.

He began to thrust his cock between her legs, rubbing it back and forth against her pussy.

He spread her legs with his own.

She was slick now, which made him more excited, and he began to move his hips faster.

She braced herself on the counter as he pushed his cock all the way inside her with one hard thrust.

They gasped together as he yanked her panties down to her knees and began to thrust inside her. He raised onto his toes with each push, fucking upwards inside of her. He grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, biting her ear.

“Drop your panties,” he whispered, as he continued to fuck her.

“Do it!”

She let her panties drop.

“Spread your legs.”

She spread them wide.

He pushed her head down over the sink so he could fuck her deeper.

She began to moan in spite of herself and that made him pump harder.

“Wider,” he hissed, and as she spread her legs even more he lifted her skirt so he could see her ass. His balls slapped against her as he fucked her even faster.

She braced her hands against the backsplash, and began to push against him, moving her hips with his rhythm in spite of herself.

He continued to fuck her pussy, rubbing her tits, which were out of her shirt and swinging with each thrust. Her nipples were hard in his hands. He slid one hand down and rubbed her clit, feeling his cock move in and out just below his fingers.

She began to moan, and he pulled his cock out, slapping it against her pussy repeatedly. Her body tensed and her clit began to tingle.

He entered her again, took several hard strokes, and pulled out to rub the head of his cock across her cunt.

She moaned louder, and moved her hips.

They both knew she was about to come.

He continued to stroke himself against her burning cunt as she came, her entire body shaking with intensity. She cried out with breathy moans as he continued to rub his cock against her wet pussy, until her orgasm slowly subsided.

He spun her around, and they faced each other for the first time.

Their eyes locked, and he put his hands around her lovely white neck he had so admired before.

He squeezed.

Her eyes grew wide.

He slid his hands to her shoulders and pushed her to her knees.

He rubbed the head of his cock against her lips, and back and forth across her mouth.

”Suck my cock,” he said.

She just looked at him.

"Open your fucking mouth."

She opened her mouth and he slid his cock inside.

“Suck it like you love it,” he said, and he began to fuck her mouth, slowly at first, pulling all the way out with every stroke so he could see her lips on its head.

He began to pump faster, his purple cock wet with her saliva.

He grabbed a fistful of her hair in each hand and began to thrust harder and deeper, shoving his cock to the back of her throat with each stroke.

“I’m gonna come down your throat. You’re gonna choke on my cock.”

She felt herself gag. Her lips were very hot.

He tensed his ass and fucked her mouth even faster.

He looked down into her eyes, wild and tense, burning into his own, and felt her hands grip his ass.

He exploded in her mouth with hot come that went on forever. She couldn't swallow it all, and as he continued to pump her mouth semen ran down the side of her face.

He relaxed his grip on her hair, and closed his eyes. He moved slowly now, occasionally opening his eyes to watch his cock go into her mouth.

He pulled it out very slowly, and stroked the shaft. He squeezed out the last drops of come, and painted her lips with it.

“Lick it clean.”

She looked up at him through feral, slitted eyes.

“Lick it.”

She stuck out her tongue, and licked the head of his cock. He recoiled with pleasure, and pulled out so she could lick the shaft.

She reached out and took hold of him with her hand. He looked down at her, surprised.

He lifted her to her feet, his cock still wet from her mouth and her pussy and his come.

They looked at each other, breathing heavily, eyes wide.

He smiled.

Her eyes narrowed.

He threw his head back and laughed.

She just looked at him.

After a moment, he said, “What’s for dinner, honey?”

She smiled sweetly, her mouth still warm from his come.

“Pasta,” she said.

© Chipperoni          Comments/Questions: chip@chipperoni.com