Short Story 9

(Be) Patient
Inkjet Print
28"x 85"

Bear was perched outside the shower, vigilant and silent as always. The black Bombay was a sleek, shiny and unappreciated guardian, especially by the one called James. He was in the shower, throwing around the filthy water as if it were a plaything and rubbing himself up and down.

 Bear wanted nothing to do with it, of course. He simply did his best to be where he was needed. The bathroom only had one door and Bear thought this was a marvelous innovation of room construction - not that he would tell anyone - because it allowed him to focus on one door and only one door, keeping himself between James and the nightfallen shroud in the room beyond.

The others were in the house somewhere, perhaps calling for Bear, wanting to rub his face and tempt him with various strings, but he was busy. This was not a service Bear took lightly, watching over the James, he had been keeping watch for years and was unknowingly proud of himself for a job well done – so far. The James, master of the house and keeper of the keys was worth saving and worth forgiving, even if he made more mistakes than he should. Bear held no reservations about the way humans treated each other, but this was about his own survival as well: the longer James was around, the easier Bear’s life was. It had been this way as long as Bear could remember and it did not strike him in any way but normal.

The man called James would never know of the shadow hanging over him, he would never know about how hard Bear had been fighting, but he was only Human and Bear did his best to understand. They all made mistakes. It was part of their nature.

Maybe it was the time of year, early December, but Bear felt especially compassionate for the James, he had no word for “love” but he felt it anyway. His duty to keep the family safe was not obligatory or assigned, but simply coincidental, or perhaps serendipitous. Christmas season always made the Humans put on smiles, but Bear never smiled. He kept a chill gaze over the world, looking for the shadow to reappear, waiting to swat at the things unseen and never to be seen. He would remain stoic in the face of changing seasons and changing times, keeping his warm feelings behind the enigmatic mask of his feline face.

James only ever picked up Bear to ask him what he was thinking, “What’s behind those eyes of yours, Bear?” He would mumble, holding Bear aloft by the soft parts under his forelegs, “Do you know what I’m saying to you?” Bear did, he always did, but he said nothing. James would stare into Bear’s yellow eyes for a long time, sometimes holding his breath and squinting, like Bear were an illusionary puzzle that would reveal its true nature in time. However, he was not. He would remain a simple family cat. James would put him down then, dragging his rough hands along Bear’s spine, smoothing out the now-frazzled fur from their awkward embrace, “Go find a mouse and kill it,” an instruction not worth following.

But sometimes the James did not understand and he would put Bear outside, these were bad nights for Bear. Of course he was ready - claws out and ears down - but he desperately wanted to go back inside, to keep watch and keep ready. The darkness was outside with him, but the Darkness was inside and the Humans could not see it. When these nights came, it was a battle of wills and this was a war of attrition. Bear would patrol and circle, looking for the opportunity to get back inside, but could he out-wait the Darkness? Was he more patient than the will of the night? He thought so, but he was not so sure anymore.

More and more often the James would put Bear outside, whether he was exiled out of frustration or simply because they thought he was better off outdoors, Bear did not know, but the ever-increasing frequency in which he was apart from the James was a sign of the end. In the way that strong winds brought the storm, Bear’s absence invited the bad times.

A Freak (Short Story 8) Part 8

Worker [In Progree]

Ross Halimer stood in the doorway that led to Yves’ room. He’d been staring at her small and defeated frame for a handful of minutes and was not sure why. Of course he’d had his way with her, that was the only purpose she was going to serve, but it wasn’t anything he’d gab about later. She was a fucking mess, Jenny – oh Jenny you dumb bastard – had beaten the shitting life out of her and just looking at her while he lay on top was like having sex with someone who wore a hamburger mask, meaning it was unpleasant.

Beyond that, she wouldn’t stop crying. Ross wasn’t going to beat or threaten her like Jenny did, but did this girl have energy. Did this girl have tears. This was another of his conundrums: the girl had been down here for four days without food or water and she still was crying, she was still struggling and fighting without so much as asking for a crumb. How could she put up such a fight? Ross was no stranger to hunger – no one out this far was – but after four days without water he would be down and dying.

So he watched her bloody face, mused at her broken wrist and grimaced every time she cried out. He couldn’t keep Jenny from his mind either and this was at the top of Mt. Distraction, here. Jenny was dead. He shot himself. The man Yves called Faceless had brought her back here and worked her over on day one. Day two they left her alone, knowing that Jenny took it farther than he should have. Day three is when he started to freak. Jenny had been complaining of groin pain, of feeling like he was kicked in his zone. Ross brushed it off, calling him a little girl and the usual that went between them. Normally Jenny would have gotten flustered and given as good as he got, but he absolutely flipped. He about slugged Ross in the nose and went off on a screaming fit the likes of which Ross had never seen. Before he could calm Jenny down, he pulled out his .38 and put it to his melted face. Boom. Gone.

Jenny had never been pretty to begin with, compete facial scarring due to burns may have made him look better than he had, but all of it was angelic compared to the way his mug was punched in by the bullet. His head practically imploded and spewed out the back, a messy red splatter on the concrete walls.

The light flickered over Ross’ head, plunging him into the darkness for a thin moment. One light, not so much of a gift after all. He remembered being given the light, being shown the bunker and nearly wetting his pants with excitement. Having such a secure place, especially with the kind of business he and Jenny tracked – had tracked – in would be a godsend. The man who showed them the light had given no instructions on how to turn it off, on or repair it. Ross knew that one day it would go off and that would be the end of it. It was amazing how having the single electric bulb made the rest of the day seem so dark, even when he had a torch or campfire it was always a candle to the flame of the pale white fluorescent.

The girl moaned again, “Please! Someone! Let me go!”

Ross turned to leave and rolled his eyes so hard that he almost fell over, shut up, freak.   

He stopped mid-stride as if hitting a wall, was the girl a Freak? Was that why she could go without food or water for so long? What could she do? Was she dangerous?

He didn’t think she was dangerous, if she could have harmed him she would have, but if she was a Freak…

I would not have fucked a Freak, no way, no how. I would have known. Like the way home or where north is. Right?  No one answered.

“Let me go!”

The shrill cry partnered up with Ross’ panic. What had she done to him? He patted himself up and down, making sure all his parts were still intact. Ten fingers. Toes. Running his digits through his hair, none of it came out in clumps. His hands met over his crotch and he suffered a stunned paralysis again. Jenny.

Fucking Jenny, talking about his junk. Shit. Was he in pain? Was his discomfort entirely in his head or had he been feeling sick all along? He definitely wanted to throw up now, though. Ross undid the button at his crotch and pulled his pants down, turning his body to face the light. What he saw was horrifying. Ross’ genitals were monstrous and engorged versions of themselves. His entire crotch was covered in boils and sores, it looked like it was melting from the inside. A dark bruise was spreading out from the base of his penis and when his pants opened a dead smell rose up from beneath the buttons.

Oh my god, I’m rotting. My dick is rotting off! “Fuck.”  He paced back and forth, staring at his Lifelong Friend and neglected to pull his pants up off the ground. He waddled like a penguin to and fro the lit room then into the darkness and back. What was happening?

Jenny. Right. He pulled his pants up, not bothering to button them again, he simply hung on. Ross stumbled down the hall to where he and Jenny had their final debate and found the gas lantern that hung securely in the darkness. After fiddling with some matches, Ross set the blazing cylinder down aside Jenny’s feet, casting a tall shadow from his boots up over his head. Never having thought this was something he would be doing, Ross opened up Jenny’s faded denim pants.

The odor that leapt out was like a brick to the face. Ross fell backwards and nearly knocked over the lantern. Not only did it seem that Jenny had soiled himself when he went, but his Combat Zone was just that, it was a bloody and horrid mess. Ross didn’t look for long, but he could have studied it for hours and not been able to identify what had been what.

He sat against the wall, tangled in the darkness, his breathing ragged and fast, heart pounding like a drum. Rational thought was drifting away, Looks like Jenny knew what was up. Ross scrambled for Jenny’s .38.

A Freak (Short Story 8) Part 7

This is what the Stick is for. A swift grip and a single knock on a glass pane set into the door, Cale could reach his arm in and find the stubborn lock. Ignoring the slicing of the remaining glass, he twisted the ancient lock and maneuvered around the opening door.

The men who controlled this sat here, he knew this even in the dark. One or two men at a time, he thought, and even under such careful care they would still let them crash. Gently riding metal trains would take curves too fast and collide into smoldering twists of metal that ended hundreds of lives at a time. How easy was it to pilot these machines? Certainly if one or two men could handle the job it wasn’t something so complicated that they should be willing to sacrifice men and women on a whim. Every reminder of the Old Ones’ blunders is a blessing – teach us not their ways.

Cale had seen Old One machinery before, most of those alive today could name and describe cars and televisions, but had no idea about the extent of the Old Ones’ power. Every time a man or woman was born who knew how to turn on the machines Cale saw the world change. Their coming usually heralded a blackened age, where thousands would perish and the face of society scarred. These people were not Freaks, not quite, but were almost always up to no good. Cale had witnessed the rise of emperors on the backs of the dead machinery and was always caught in the middle of the disasters. He did not want to call himself an assassin, but these people did have to be dealt with by someone. But then there were others, often women, who had the affinity that traded in humanism and dealt good fates to others. The last child to turn on power was a small girl.

The girl, her name had been Paige, lived along the ocean on Manh Island, a narrow landmass in the northern regions of the East.  She was fortunate in that her family lived on the outskirts of the Sleepless City, so she could be hidden from the populace of the area. Even the rumors of such children were enough to unify the frightened and panicky into small mobs that wanted to punish these little ones for crimes they had not yet committed. They were simply scared. Paige, while sheltered from the outside, scavenged anything that was still in working order, any of the trinkets left behind.  Her family could wash clothes in solar-powered machines, they could keep in touch with hand-held radio devices and they could stay safe with stun guns. Paige kept searching though, knowing that none of these things were helping anyone aside from her family. It was always harder for her, looking in places that were ever more and more overgrown. Places shrouded in a recovering woodland and unrelenting forest.

Paige found a crumbling building, darkened by a canopy from species of trees that hadn’t lived on the island for centuries. She couldn’t read it, but the fading signs marked it as South Hampton Hospital. Within the hospital was very little hope, most of the hallways and rooms were crushed and collapsing under the weight of time, but in the basement is where Paige found a treasure trove. There were devices that could restart a stopped heart, machines that could see a man’s insides and almost all of them were portable. Paige had the ability to set up a makeshift hospital in the heart of her small town.

She was a saint to those who came to her for help, a girl of ten who could practically bring back the dead or reverse the spread of ever-present cancers. Paige, though, encountered the same problem that every other child in her shoes did: she couldn’t teach the others. Even when she spoke in the clearest of instructions and made pamphlets and booklets on how to turn things on – how to keep them running – it always came out like gibberish, mandates spoken in tongues to a directionless flock. So she was the only one who could help. Aside from basic first-aid, her nurses were of little value.

So, when men finally came for her, there was no one to help. Every good deed she performed was not enough to convince these gangsters that she would not become a tyrant, that she would not find a cache of bombs and bring Manh Island to its knees. They shot her and while she lay bleeding and dying on a crisp white paper-covered table her heart stopped and no one could bring it back. She died at twelve years old.

Cale could not turn on machines, his knowing what the train did and how it functioned was simply something bestowed upon him for a purpose yet unforeseen.

The skeletons persisted. Bang. Louder now, as if they were being thrown by a great fist instead of charging in on their own. He was running out of time. Cale stretched his hand out and tapped on the glass that he knew was at the nose of the train, it was of average thickness and was done no favors by time. Glass like this always slipped downward like an extremely viscous honey, so the top of the pane was marginally thinner than its base. Bang. Bang. Faster now too.

Moving back to his original car, Cale brought the matches out and struck two sticks with a fast flick of his wrist. Both sulfur heads flared to life and hung on against the wind of his movement. Not needing the small orange glow they provided, he threw the matches down onto the pile of defeated undead. Like before, the pile of ashes and bone blazed into life, battling between the natural orange of the fire and the lime green that breathed out of the risen dead.

Suddenly the train car was fully lit, the smoke beginning to crowd the ceiling, desperate to find a way into the open air. Cale turned from the fire, he moved to the front car. His back against the wall, he grasped the metal cylinder in his right hand, ready to let it go.

Bang.

Bang. Bang. Bangbang. Bangbangbang.

The metal doors flew inwards, shards of bone and skull perforating the air, small whistles that fell onto the green fire. Cale was ready. He pulled the pin and threw the -

(Grenade!)

 -around the corner. It struck the ground and bounced once, flying into the empty space of the train car. Through the doors came a black flood, a living oil spill that spread through the air. “JOHHH-“

Cale crouched and covered his ears as the grenade exploded.  It was a deafening fireball that devoured the living darkness of the speaker and wrapped him in the soft glove of a blacksmith, a warm and rough embrace. The windshield of his train car blew outwards from the pressure spraying tiny glass knives out onto the empty track – no monsters outside, not yet. In the fractured seconds after the explosion, Cale leapt out the window, never looking back to see if the fire would be enough.

A Freak (Short Story 8) Part 6

Producer (of Culture) Inkjet Print 37" x 42"

The steady thudding of the thrown bodies continued, like a sandbag full of stones slapping into a metal clock face. It was slow, but constant work, the undead pressed on at the whim of the Speaker - their master - and Cale sat in contemplation.

The train car was astoundingly empty, aside from the debris he dragged in, and was devoid of the pressing aura of gloom that was swamping the air outside. It was a small oasis in a smaller desert that Cale could not escape. He crouched near one of the metal seats, trying to solve a problem with two paths: does he attempt to destroy the Speaker? A Freak whom he was not sent after and – as of yet – has not shown Cale his face, or should he find a way to escape the subway, fleeing into the tunnels. There were no promises that the Speaker’s hordes did not fill every crevice of the subway system, that outside the train car there were not hundreds and thousands of undead commuters who wanted to collect his ticket.  He couldn’t look out the windows, the flare dying long ago and dared not light his remaining torch until he was absolutely decided. His fate sitting before him , invisible like the train car in the dark, and beckoning him forward.

Thud. Thud.  The corpses had been at this for hours, not making much progress with each blow, but inevitably it would fall inwards, flooding the train car with bones and teeth that seek out Cale in the black.

Thud. Thud. The pile of bones at Cale’s feet – the fallen forms of the skeletons that clung to his coat – shifted uneasily, as if there was some animating force still within them, but not enough to bring them back a second time. Cale stood, finally moving away from the door. He began pacing up and down the aisle between the seats, heedless of the repeated crunch of his stepping on the struggling sinew.  Regardless of how long he spent down here his eyes never grew accustomed to the darkness. There were not vague shapes at the edge of his vision to give him a frame of reference. No reflections of moonlight, or the burning he knew was happening above.

Might not be safe from the burning here after all, he mused solemnly. The corpses and trash along the concrete steps could easily ignite and send a wave of fire down to fill the subway, possibly incinerating the speaker and promising to bake Cale alive within the train car. Even if he escaped, he may just find the surface a raging inferno, incapable of hosting him while he fought through until daylight. Of course, all of his prior speculation could be wrong, the fire could have been accident or would simply die out without fuel, but Cale was hedging his bets, counting on the fact that topside was ablaze. Should he get out of here and make it to the surface only to find it a screaming firestorm he would be as pegged as he was now – cauterized bites from the undead, trapped in a train car and his life sought after by a Freak. The tunnels still held hope, though.

If Cale could get out of the train, destroy or impede the Freak and his servants and put distance between himself and this station he may survive. It was a lot of ands. So much could go wrong, other train cars could have crashed, undead could be within the tunnels, the fire could find its way down anyways. What did it matter, though? Cale thought he was dead if he stayed here.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He laughed. Can’t sit here forever.

He swung his bag around on his shoulder, his hands guided by memory without the light, and began to grasp at straws. The bag held everything: the remaining flare, a box of matches, a flattened wide-brimmed hat, everything. If Cale needed water he kept it in the bag. Food, in the bag. Everything came from his searching, nothing here was purchased back East – most of their goods were not durable enough to weather the roads. 

The pieces and parts made by the Old Ones thought, there were gems amongst them. The flares sat at the bottom of a cavern, a man who was climbing down (spelunking, Cale’s thoughts spoke up) had fallen and died around his gear. Most of it was rubbish, rusted or broken, but the flares were a miracle. How many years ago that had been was lost, Cale knew better than to try and determine his age. It mattered little, he would die one day and it would be at the hands of a Freak most likely.

Maybe today is the day, he thought with a cold quality, although this isn’t how I wanted it.

His hands fell on something he had forgotten about. A small, round metal canister. It fit perfectly in his hand like the cold dead heart of a machine. What was it called? The words that came to him from the ether were dodging his grasp – this was always how it worked, when he wanted the names they were out of reach.  It would remain that way for now, time was reeling in and the endless procession of skeletons was still bearing down on the doorframe. Cale was struck with an idea, the matches and the metal canisters were key to something. Those two items would guide him out of this tomb, destroying the Speaker? He did not know. His feet carried him effortlessly back to the pile of bones and fabric, not needing his sight to know the perfect dimensions of the train car. Crouching, he ran his fingers through it… dry as dust. Perfect.

Almost running now, he found another door within the car, knowing it was there the same way he knew that it was called a Subway and discovered it opened with comparable ease. Beyond the door was further darkness, simply an extension of his current cell, but he was sure there was more at the end of this car. Not the outside, but something else. Empty as the prior cabin, Cale walked through the car with ease, coming to another door. Locked.

A Freak (Short Story 8) Part 5

Silence penetrated the small room just as deeply as the gunshot. Yves only heard her ragged breath and the ever present buzzing from the ancient light fixture. She  was sure she sat in silence for only a minute, but her frightened and blind senses told her it was hours, days, maybe weeks that she sat there, listening for the Faceless Man to return, to come at her with the gun and decide that raping her was not something he had an interest in any longer. 

The clammy sweat still held on against her skin, chilling her naked body except for the burning part of her ribs which refused to shut up. Her ears picked up nothing, just those two same sounds and the heavy din of the void in which she was trapped – silence.

Her hand started wiggling again, without her conscious mind telling it to, as if it wanted her attention, hey, brain, we’ve got to go.

Maybe he’s gone, she pondered as she pulled harder against the rope, threatening to rip her hand right off of her arm. Yves did not want to put too much faith in that thought, she had no idea what context to put what she heard, two voices, one scream, one gun shot. Who was the other voice? Was that person gone? Were they dead? There were too many questions for her to focus on, especially with the stretch of her burning muscles clamping down around her concentration. The pain in her wrist now rose steadily, but she kept pulling.

Is that other voice coming for me?

Her first and fourth metacarpal snapped, two dull pops in her hand as the rope squeezed against them. The pain should have been blinding, but as Yves was already near-blind and had so many other breaks and injuries, it was simply a muted blanket that stacked on top of the already sky-high tower of her waking death. She had to bite down on her lip to keep from yelling out, both because of the new pain and from exaltation – of being able to now fit her hand through the rope.

Blood leaked down her chin, but Yves dared now to smile, her broken hand guided by touch to the other rough knot at her right wrist. She was going to get free, her hand could still function enough to grapple the hemp shackle, even if it was shaking like a leaf.

But then the footsteps began.

Yves couldn’t stop a small whimper from dropping free  of her throat, both disappointment and fear pushed it out. The steps meant that someone was alive, one of the two voices. Was it the Faceless Man? Come to rape her again? Or take out his frustration from the intruder by beating her again? Or was it the other one? The man or woman who just happened upon this disaster.

The steps came closer, an even clock that ticked away the distance between Yves and the unknown. The footfalls were flat and soft, like a properly soled shoe, but not a boot.  Closer. Closer. Yves frantically scrambled against the woven rope that still kept her right hand, scratching and pulling without regard for her rising pain, pushing it aside like the bodies in a crowd, leaving it to come up from behind later. She wasn’t going to make it, even if she freed her hand, both of her feet were still tied up and she had no means of escape after that. At best, she could use the rope to grapple with whoever came in, but her overpowering someone was as likely as her falling asleep – not going to happen.

The whimper became full tears again, burning waterfalls of salt and despair that plunged down her face, she didn’t bother being silent any longer, letting her choked-on cries and moans reach the approaching boots.

They didn’t slow or quicken or change in any way. The footsteps came on.

“Please! Just don’t hurt me! Not again!” Her dry throat cracked like a preteen boy. “Please!”

The steps stopped at the door. Yves could hear the rise and fall of their breathing, deep and gasping suction through their nose, pulling at the air with an audible sniff.

“Please…” There was no stopping her crying now, she let the tears come as the stranger approached.

“You’re going to be okay.”

Yves moaned with relief, bringing her broken hand to hide her face and the mangled way it must look. She started to say so many things, only getting out half a word at a time before it was eaten up by sobs and gasps for air. “T-Th-Th-“

“Shhh” The new voice said, a smooth and even man’s voice, not that of the Faceless Man, but of a stranger. Just that one sound was like a lullaby to Yves, it rocked her into comfort and safety. This stranger will set her free, she thought of miracles and destiny and fate, thanking the God she had always been told was up there. “I don’t mean to be rude miss, but you look a sight,” He gently took her left hand and brushed his calloused fingers over the edges of her palms.

Yves quivering gasps became muddled with laughter, He tries to be charming in a place like this?

“Just relax, you’ll be okay, miss.” His grip moved to her wrist and tightened there.

“Wha-“ All the fear came rising back up, the man in the crowd she pushed aside returned for a stab in her back. The pain resurfaced and pushed red velvet into her already darkened vision. “NO!”

The velvet voice put her wrist back in the rope, tightening it further.      

 
“NO!!!”