He took a step back, resting his red palms on his knees, wrestling his aged lungs for enough breath to speak. “Look, fella… I haven’t got the right gear to get you out of this. All I got is these old wrinkled hands. I’m gonna get some help, okay?”

There was no reply, only the tremble of splinter-ripped fingers and a quivering movement from the man’s lips, and Arnold feared the man was falling unconscious. If he was trying to say something, Arnold couldn’t hear it. All he could hear was his own rasping breath, the drumming of his heart in his ears, and his spaniel as it scampered amongst the overgrown bushes barking at them as if a deadly predator was lurking amongst them.

It was a mystery how anyone could get into such a terrible state. Arnold was walking his dog through the forest when he found the man. It was a new route; the east side of the woods which he thought he’d try, despite the warnings from his neighbors. They’d told him that the woods weren’t right. That that’s where the ‘Bramble Man was’, and that newcomers to the town like Arnold ought to talk to a few more people before being stupid enough to go in there. Arnold had ignored them of course, passing off their ghost stories as rural myth, but he felt the change in the atmosphere as soon as he stepped over the first few stiles. He’d smelt a powerful stench in the air too, like peeled onions left out too long in the sun, and heard the nervous whining of his dog as they pressed on. But it was only when he heard the wind through the hollows that he began to wonder if there was any truth to the stories; it sounded like the desolate moaning of someone near death. So just to be sure, Arnold went to investigate.

That’s when he came upon what his superstitious fear told him might be The Bramble Man. The poor victim was almost naked. Obviously a vagrant, he was an ugly sort – dark, oily skin, an explosion of warts across his face and a nose like a flattened vegetable. Just a few ragged clothes patterned like autumn leaves torn like newspaper through a shredder, covered him. Those and the impossible tangle of bramble and vines festooned across his body. With his limbs planted into the soil near the roots of the tree, and the thorny plant wrapped around him like mossy rope, he looked as though he’d been the victim of a hate crime. That and the blood.

Noon day sun burned through the canopy, almost sizzling the sweat on Arnold’s balding head, and he wondered if it was the heat causing him to feel so tired, or just the effort and stress of trying to free this unfortunate man. Or perhaps it was that pungent onion smell. It seemed to be coming from a pollen-like substance in the air, produced by small, pumpkin-like fruit nestling like miniature Halloween lanterns amongst the brambles.

Shaking himself out of his growing fatigue, Arnold tilted his head and looked into the man’s half-closed eyes. “Just getting my breath, fella. Like I said, I’m gonna get help. I’d use my phone, but the no signal’s weak in this valley, see?”

If he were a younger man, he would have stayed to help. Ripping those plants away would have been easy enough for stronger arms, and maybe he could do that if he tried for a little longer, but he was so very tired, and there was no way he would have the strength to carry this man back into town all by himself. No; as much as he feared that this man might actually die if left too long, and as much as he was wrestling with his own desire to sit and rest, he knew he had to go back and get someone.

“I’ll be back in a jiff, you’ll see.”

Struggling upright, and calling his dog, Arnold made his way back to town.

—

“You big city types never bloody listen, do you? Or didn’t anyone tell you them woods is haunted, Arnold?”

Keith Manning slammed down the bonnet of the car he had been servicing, and snatched an oily towel from a hook on the wall.

Arnold said, “They’re just stories aren’t they?”

The mechanic shook his head ruefully as he rubbed the cloth around his black fingers. Two of the garage’s engineers – boys no older than seventeen – glanced at each, trying to conceal grins provoked by the prospect of getting involved in a town drama.

“Whatever!” Keith said. “Stories or not, ghosts or not, there’s no denying that people have died in there, and there’s probably truth in the rumors that the missing people met there end in there too.”

“One of my mate’s cousins went in there,” said one of the boys, “and he reckons he saw something.”

“Thing is, Arnold,” Keith went on, ignoring his worker, “you’re new here, and you don’t know the history –”

“Look, I really don’t give a shit about ghosts.’ Arnold stepped forward. ‘You heard what I said – there’s a fella in the woods needs help, and your garage is the closest place. Are you coming or not?”

Keith was already grabbing a pair of bolt croppers from a workbench before he answered. “Alright, alright, Arnold. I didn’t say anything about not helping, I was just saying it’s dangerous in there… Steve, Darren,” he said, waving the croppers at the boys, “go and get some tools from the shed out back, then come and catch us up… oh, and call an ambulance. Hurry.”

Arnold nodded with relief and followed Keith out the door whilst the boys obeyed their employer.

“So, you said he looked beaten up bad?” Keith asked.

“I don’t know if he was beaten. He just… well, he was all caught up in the brambles. Looked like he was on his last legs.”

Keith stopped dead. “Brambles?”

“Yes.” They stared at each other for a moment or two, and Arnold’s spaniel pulled hard at her lead, yapping.

“Was it the Bramble Man?” Keith asked, curtly.

“How the hell should I know? Like I said, surely that’s just a story, right?”

“Right.” But Keith pursed his lips and squeezed the handle of his bolt croppers a little tighter before speaking again. “You remember where this bloke was?”

“Dizzy does.” Arnold nodded at his dog who was still straining towards the woodland, barking.

It was then that the two boys joined them, breathless from their brief sprint.

“Will these do?” asked Steve, offering a long bladed knife and a loaded toolbox.

“It’ll do,” said Keith.

“Ambulance is on its way,” Darren added.

—

Twenty five yards from the tree, just as the rancid onion stench hit them, the mechanic halted and observed the man in the brambles as if he was a wounded lion. “I don’t know if we should do this,” he said.

Arnold and the two youths stopped too.

“What do you mean?” Arnold said. “Do you think he’s too injured to move? Think we should wait for the ambulance?”

Keith gulped, squeezing even harder on the handle of his croppers, not taking his eyes off the vine-covered man. “Uh… yeah, yeah, that’s what I mean.”

But Arnold wasn’t convinced. “What are you scared of?”

“Is it the Bramble man?” whispered one of the youths.

Keith straightened a little at hearing the question and blinked angrily, as if the boy had unmasked his fear before a ridiculing audience. “Shut up!”

“Give me the croppers,” said Arnold, yanking them from Keith’s grip. “Whoever the poor bastard is, he doesn’t look like the bogey man to me.”

“Wait!”

But Arnold was already striding over to the man, determined not to let the returning fatigue get the better of him, and reluctantly, the others joined him.

Even with the aid of their tools, it took over ten minutes to rip the man out through the thorny tangle of branch, vine and stem. The poor wretch was almost unrecognizable as a human by the time they laid him several yards away in the dirt. His feet and hands were so gnarled and twisted, they looked almost indistinguishable from the roots that had got caught around them in the ground. And he didn’t look like he was breathing either.

“Is… he still… alive?” Arnold panted, waving a cloud of pollen away from his face.

The four of them lay next to the victim, all too exhausted to do anything but talk.

“Don’t know,” said Keith. “Just need to… rest… a minute.”

Arnold struggled to breathe, and regretted each gulp of air as the onion smell from the pumpkin fruit tainted each lungfull. “I think that plant’s poisonous. We shouldn’t be this tired.”

And through blurred vision and muffled hearing, he caught the scuffling of boots and urgent voices just before he passed out.

—

“You’re lucky to be alive, Mr. Emerson,” said a blurred face.

Two gentle hands nudged him upright against a soft pillow. “But just relax, you’re absolutely fine thanks to the wonders of private healthcare.” Arnold saw a smile somewhere through the haze. “No lasting damage. If you’re feeling up to it, the doctor will be along in a few minutes to talk to you.”

The doctor arrived fifteen minutes later, and it took ten of those for Arnold to assemble his thoughts and memories into something meaningful.

“Hello, Mr. Emerson,” said a tall, balding man with a goatee beard and a clipboard. “How are you feeling?”

“A little light-headed. What happened? Where are the others?”

“Mr. Manning, Steven Frame and Darren Hardwick are fine, don’t worry. They’re all here receiving treatment.”

“There were five of us. What happened to the other man, the one we rescued?”

“I’m afraid he didn’t make it.”

“Oh God! That’s terrible. Was it the plant that killed him?”

“We don’t know yet, but the circumstances of his death has raised a number of questions, some of which the police need your assistance with. Do you feel up to talking with them?”

“Of course, yes, of course… Oh, what about dizzy, my dog?”

“I’m afraid nobody found a dog, Mr. Emerson.”

“But she’s still out there,” Arnold sat up. “I have to go and find her.”

The doctor pressed him back down onto the bed with a smile. “I am afraid you’ll have to stay in here a further twenty-four hours under observation, the police should be able to help you, though.”

The police interview didn’t take long, and after a making a clearly evasive commitment to search for his dog, the police went on to ask him a series of unusual questions about what he had seen in the woods, whether he had told anyone else about his experience and if he had heard of the ‘Bramble Man’. Arnold knew a cover up when he saw one. Upon asking them about the dead man and if he had family, all they would tell him was that the body had been taken away to some other hospital for ‘tests’. All their questions were geared to find out how much he knew rather than getting anything useful out of him, and they had left him some non-disclosure agreements to fill out by morning.

As a retired political journalist, Arnold knew his rights, but he also knew they’d never let him leave the village if he didn’t make his mark on their dotted line. Whatever was going, he was as much a fan of conspiracies as he was of ghost stories, and before the uniformed men had even left the ward, Arnold had already made his mind up that he was going on his own personal crusade to expose all of it, whatever it was.

Finding and securing his clothing and belongings was no easy task, but rather than cause a scene and arouse suspicion, the nurses on the ward let him leave. Arnold knew the locals would be all over him soon enough, but he also knew that if he called the right people, they’d have a hard time keeping him down. He called in every favor he knew from his days of working in the city as he hurried back to the woods. He’d called his old editor at The Country Herald newspaper, several tenacious journalists from rival papers, his doctor at St Bartholomew’s Practice, a barrister he’d known for twenty years, and several more influential contacts he’d forged relationships with since his retirement. There was no way they were keeping this quiet.

—

“Dizzy!” Arnold yelled as he got closer to the woods. “Here, girl, I’m over here. Come find me, girl.”

He hesitated when he reached the first few trees, a slow chill creeping through his limbs as he peered into the silent woods. “Dizzy!”

He waited a minute more, hoping that she would come bounding through the trees any moment. But she didn’t. He’d have to go in there.

Steeling himself, Arnold was about to head into the woods when the loud chirp of his cell phone sent a spike of adrenaline through his chest.

“God!” he swore into the mouthpiece as he answered it. “Who’s this? You scared the –”

“That you, Arnold?” came a whisper at the other end.

“Yes, it’s me. Is that Kirstie?” Arnold started walking and pressed a finger against his other ear to blot out the sound of his shoes crunching on dry leaves.

“Yeah, listen, I’m on the director’s PC. It’s the only way I could hack into the hospital database to find out about this John Doe you said they’d transferred.”

“That was fast, thanks, I really appreciate –”

“Forget it, Arnold. Just tell me what the hell’s going on? What’ve you got yourself involved with?”

“I already told you, they’re trying to-”

“Because that body isn’t a body.”

“What?”

“I said it isn’t a body,” she hissed.

“Isn’t a body… what… what do you-” Arnold struggled over a stile, smelled the stench of onions again and knew he was getting closer to where he first found the Bramble Man and lost Dizzy.

“It’s a-”

“Hold on a minute, I’ll call you back,” said Arnold, suddenly alarmed by a mournful groan nearby. He heard her say “no” as he pocketed the phone, then stood very still, listening to the silence of the woods, hoping for a repeat of the sound.

Nothing.

“Dizzy!” he yelled.

Then came the moan again. The same moan he heard earlier that day before all this trouble began. “Hello?” he called.

The phone rang again sending Arnold’s nerves into a momentary frenzy. Cursing, he fumbled the phone from his pocket and answered it. It was Kirstie.

“Damn it, Arnold, don’t cut me off, I was trying to tell you something important.”

“Well, what?”

“I was trying to tell you. That body wasn’t a person, their preliminary report says the cell structure is all wrong. They’ve got cellulose or something.”

“Cellulose? So…” Arnold started walking towards the direction of the moaning.

“Yes, cellulose, there’s been a mix up, it’s a bloody plant, Arnold, not your man. And the report says something about the sample being completely covered with spores.”

“What?” His eyelids were getting heavy.

“A plant.”

Arnold tried to waft away the fetor from his nose as he approached a particularly tangled area of bushes. “No. I saw him, he was definitely a man.”

“You might have thought he was but –”

“Oh God!”

“What? What is it, Arnold?”

As if a crucifixion had been set up in a wild garden and then forgotten, a man – exactly the same man as earlier – almost naked apart from a covering of leaves, was hanging amongst a scribble of thorny vines. The same nose, like a flattened vegetable and the same scattering of warts covered the vagrant’s oily, pleading face. From the bloated fruit that surrounded the man, tiny jets of pollen streamed outwards in sulphurous clouds and Arnold coughed as some of it stung his nostrils.

“Arnold? Are you still there? What’s up?”

“He’s bait,” said Arnold, sounding shell-shocked. “The Bramble man… he’s bait. Like a Venus fly trap or… or an angler fish with one of those little lights on the end of its jaw… except… the Bramble Man… he’s that little light…”

“What the hell are you talking about? Listen, this story’s huge, I’m taking it to the editor. The whole village will be crawling with journalists by nightfall, so make sure you’re still there, okay? I want the exclusive.”

“No, no! You can’t send anyone. The spores!” Arnold knew now why the village was covering everything up. “I made a mistake.”

“Too late, Arnold, we’re not letting this one go. I’ll see you later.”

The phone went dead, and as the pumpkin-fruit fumes continued to clog his throat, he sank to his knees, losing his fight against the fog that was rapidly overtaking his mind. He managed to punch redial, but feeling his movements grow sluggish, he dropped his phone amongst the brambles. More pollen puffed around him as he fumbled through the dirt and then his fingertips touched something. An empty dog collar.

“No,” he whispered. Tiny roots snaked across his fingers. The lure of sleep drew his face into the soil. Night came.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Simon lives in Essex England earning his keep as a Clinical Trials scientist. He is currently working on his fourth novel – “The Soul Consortium”

www.simonwb.com

The most recent hurricane swamped the neighborhood several blocks in from the shore. The streets are dark and still even though the electricity has been restored. The basements have been bilged and essential systems are up and running but the lower floors, tainted by horrifying memories and water damage, have been abandoned to rot. Occupants now crowd in upper stories, in some cases using fire escapes to get in and out to avoid the toxic mold. One can only assume that eventually these buildings will crumble beneath their higher upper inhabitants, but these are desperate times and the long view isn’t a luxury that many have.

Before the storms this neighborhood was a home to serious nightlife. In the early days of the Bushwick uprising, slumming Manhattanites fled back to the island, rents dropped and some buildings sat vacant. An influx of the young, broke and rebellious filled the vacancies. It wasn’t long before these quiet blocks became the social brine in which the borough’s independence movement formed and flourished. Now it is damp, dark and silent, though you still sense, in a stray hint of distant music or a glimmer of light through a curtained window, that the party continues. Folks may not be reveling out in the streets as they had in the past but they find ways to celebrate life in dark times, whether in high story lofts, rooftop dance clubs or the water tight beer cellar that is my destination.

The level of silt and mud rises in the streets with every step. Initially tucked into masonry corners and eroded potholes, by the time I cross Wythe river sand fills the street even with the sidewalk. I switch my lens’ optics down through the light spectrum and scan the silent warehouses, each identical in its weathered and abandoned appearance, until I spot a deep neon glow above an otherwise unmarked door that reads “Evergreen”. I lay my thumb on the unassuming door’s metal handle and wait impatiently to hear the welcoming click of the latch. The door opens with a creak and a shutter and I duck in to a lightless corridor. I make my way blindly on, through another heavy metal door and then into an ersatz air lock.

On my left is a serious countertop fashioned from iron rods and diamond plating. Behind it sits a young girl with gorgeous tattoos making a show of being as impenetrable as the counter. She deducts my door fee and nonchalantly requests that I surrender my weapons. She takes my two boot knives and my Browning and places them in an re-purposed school gym locker and hands me an encrypted key fob on an elastic wristband that stirs memories of swimming at the YMCA as a kid. I’m then buzzed in to a dark metallic hallway in which my systems, tech & flesh, are screened for pathogens and my connection with the wide web is severed. All the high rez imagery and toggling stats disappear and the grit of unfiltered reality drops the floor down a few feet. A moment’s pause and then a final door opens leading to the lounge.

Stepping in to the lounge my systems boot up onto the clubs local network. Lists of patrons, mostly l337 gibberish and randy screen names of course, scroll by along with drink specials and DJ and performance lineups. I shake off the information swarm and toss it in the background to be sorted and packed for access. The place is pretty standard. Dark wood and black walls furnished with a scattering of mismatched tables, chairs and couches, everything drenched in filthy red light. I garner very little attention from the scattered groups of talkers, drinkers and well healed slummers on the make as I cross the room to the well worn bar and order up a double tequila with a mandrake infusion.

I try hard not to scowl at the pack of trust fund revolutionaries at the corner table but as I catch the attention of one of their number my countenance betrays me. I’m instantly locked in a bar length staring match. He and his friends are decked out in overly tailored uniforms trimmed out with a hapless clutter of meaningless medals and patches like a pack of arrogant eagle scouts. They have completed the look with bandannas and berets lifted from school videos of third world freedom fighters nearly a century old. The three of these dudes are talking up a storm of shit to a gaggle of cheap, vacant girls with low cut tops and big hairdos. The presence of the girls confirms my suspicions that absolutely nothing will be gained by a confrontation. I try out the casual head nod at the glaring prick but too much time and cold air has passed between us. So before he can push his chair back and make his way over I throw my drink back and make a calm but efficient exit from the lounge and into the clubs main atrium.

As I slip through the black leaden curtains the stale warmth of the lounge gives way to an uneasy chill, unexpected for a large room packed beyond capacity with gyrating bodies. The dance floor is pitch black with the exception of a few brilliant geometric swathes of clean white light that hover about the ceiling subtly illuminating the massive brick lined dimensions of the re-purposed beer vault. The sidewalls and vaulted ceiling still posses their ancient hand masoned brick facade. However, the walls at each end of the long cavern have been replaced with thirty foot sheets of unblemished obsidian so flawless they act more as windows than mirrors.

As my eyes adjust to the dark I can make out the subtle silhouettes of ethereal humanoid shapes on the other side of the dark glass. Some just hang suspended above the floor while others float gently upward and yet others appear to be dancing with the same lazy abandon as their flesh and blood counterparts.

The music is an uneasy mix of scattershot eastern percussion cut through with a pulsing kick drum. Eerie synths channel the atmosphere of ancient harpsichords minus the cheesy Vincent Price allusions while a distant rumbling bass line rises from deep below the cement floor. It’s this distant but steadily approaching low end rumble that draws me in. It grows subtly, mutating and increasing its momentum, moving in closer and laying flesh on to the erratic percussion that is dancing about my skull. It’s not long before my chest tightens and my breath goes shallow. I can feel the mandrake and alcohol radiating heat in my cheeks now. By the time the sub-bass fully materializes, the entire masonry cellar is vibrating and my eyes are struggling to focus.

I surrender my eyesight to the darkness and the engulfing low end rush. As my focus fades my gaze is locked deep within one of the dark obsidian walls. All definition of the world around me dissipates and the ethereal beings beyond the dark glass gain detail and distinction. Eventually I can make out each digit on each hand and the subtlest nuance of each facial expression. A nervous energy runs through the crowd as the music reaches a physical and emotional peak and one by one the ethereal spirits glide across the dark glass plane and into the three dimensional world of flesh and stone. They glide just overhead of the revelers, deftly criss-crossing the room and then dive downward into the crowd, their vaporous forms passing effortlessly through the bodies of the dancers. I am struck by an electric chill and turn suddenly to catch a fleeting glimpse of a female spirit emerging from my chest and continuing on gracefully through a sea of bodies. I am overcome with a fleeting series of foreign emotions and unfamiliar thoughts that sit unintelligibly just out of my mental grasp. My unconscious mind yearns after these intangible experiences as a solidly throbbing kick drum rises through the murky sub-bass and carries my near limp body into a gently nodding, skanking motion.

The revelers around me are also merging elation with motion, dancing their way ever so effortlessly through the confusion and anxiety and toward a more focused yet fluid state of being. I begin to remember why I used to come here so often and why I have been so eager to return. But just as quickly as the cathartic moment had come on it fades out again. The energy lowers slightly. The rushing bass line retreats into the distance and the whirling spirits reluctantly retreat to their place across the smooth black rift. I try to keep dancing, to carry the moment forward but I’ve been reminded of the real reason I’ve come here tonight and it carries serious weight. I give in to the increasing and let my limbs fall limp. I take a series of sharp breathes to gather myself and then make my way across the crowded dance floor toward a set of unassuming doors in the opposing wall of brick.

The huge oak doors close silently behind me extinguishing all sound from the main room. The gentle hum of hushed voices fills the space with reassuring white noise. A flickering candle chandelier reveals, in shadowed glimpses, the circumference of the large round chamber. A faint glow rises off of table tops that double as touch screen monitors, radiating from each of a dozen or so alcoves along the outer wall. The light of each altar outlines a silhouette engaged in conversation with another figure that remains unseen within each recess. A few seats sit empty but I instinctively know to wait in the shadows until a particular medium is free. Eventually a young man rises and leaves by the same door I’d come in. Drawn across the echoing stone floor I take a seat across a gently pulsing table from and a tall slender woman wrapped in a shear shroud of deep cobalt blue.

The smooth glass table monitor separates us. I feebly attempt to dry my hand on my pants and place my fingers, print side down, on the cool surface. A soft swirling pulse of geometric patterns appears as my systems synch with hers and the proper sum is transferred from my bank account.

“It’s been a long time.” Her voice is low and hushed yet every word is perfectly enunciated and delivered directly to my ears. “I was wondering if I would ever see you again on this side of the glass.”

“I didn’t think that you’d re-open so soon”

“Re-open?” she laughs gently, “this place is air tight when it needs to be, we barely closed at all after the last one. The curfews are a bit of an inconvenience but as you can see the more suffering is wrought in the world the more people need to be social, to release their anxiety and to reach out into the beyond.”

An uneasy pause draws out as I try and make out her eyes in the dim monitor glow but they are lost to fabric and darkness.

“She has been asking about you frequently.” She nudges the conversation gently toward the business at hand. “I hardy know what to tell her.”

“Is she alright?” I try to sound calm and detached but my voice betrays me. “Is something wrong?”

“She’s fine, what problems can there be for her now? She is just a bit lonely is all, and a bit concerned for her older brother’s welfare”

Her words, while laced with well practiced nonchalance, are of no comfort.

“Can I speak with her now?”

I can feel her staring at me through the veil, as if sizing up my fitness.

“Lay your other hand down and give me a moment to see if I can draw her out.”

I place my palms down on opposite ends of the glass. The heat of my hands reacts with the touch sensitive surface. A series of vibrant hues radiate out from my fingers towards the darkness. I can hear her heavy yet measured breathing from across the table as she prepares herself. After a few moments she exhales and lays her hands authoritatively down across from mine. Her long slender fingers bring a blue and purple reaction from the screen in contrast to my oranges and reds. I can sense her eyes closing and her focus increasing as her steady breaths become more shallow and percussive Her lips move quickly but no sounds emerge from them. A cold chill rises up from the darkness, swirls around my legs and climbs until it raises the hair at the base of my neck. Candles flicker above me. My vision strobes out gently into the shadows and then there is a voice.

“Javee? Javier is that you?” the stern confidence of the older woman’s voice has been unnervingly replaced by another. High pitched, unsteady and glorious, it’s the voice of my kid sister, Sarah.

“It’s me baby girl” a reflexive grin spreads across my face.

“Javee it’s so good to hear your voice, I was worried for you”

“I’m sorry Sarah, there was another storm and the curfews have tightened, and things have just been a bit mad really, but I’m here now. Is everything alright? Are you OK?”

“Oh Javee, it’s gotten worse here. I knew something had happened ’cause the emptiness, it suddenly filled with voices screaming and crying a lot like when I … first came over. But things haven’t settled since then really, it’s loud and hot always and there is never a moments peace.”

“Don’t you fret baby girl. It will be alright Things will calm down again, you’ll see.”

“I don’t think so Javee. I don’t think things will ever be OK here. Javee, I think… no I know, though I don’t know how, that it’s time for me to pass on, to leave this stale emptiness behind and step out into the cool wind beyond.”

I’m struck dumb, a series of desperate arguments and entreaties race through my head but I can tell in the unwavering tone of her voice that she has decided.

She breaks the silence, “Big brother there is something else, something I’ve been holding on so I could tell you…”

The words are scrambled and distorted through my sinking loss

“What’s that Sarah?”

“Javier I have heard your name, I’ve heard your name whispered over here, repeated and it’s growing more frequent. Big brother, I’m afraid that your time, like my time, is coming soon”

My ears fill with the pulsing of blood and my eyes swim with liquid as my quivering lips stammer.

“Thank you Sarah, I love you baby girl and I’ll miss you.”

“I love you too Javee”, her response disintegrates in to a dissonant glitchy hiss and then disappears into the darkness, lost to my ears forever.

My head fills with white noise as emotion threatens to tear me apart. I rise up quickly and awkwardly sending the chair skittering across the cement floor and shattering the chamber’s oppressive silence. I lunge forward through the heavy doors and out into the frantic crowd filled atrium. I can’t breathe as I struggle my way through the packed room, walls and bodies closing in on me. The music I had enjoyed moments before is now only a series of grating noises flying at me through space. It seems like hours pass before I cross the floor. I throw myself through the heavy curtains only to hit something so solid that I have to lunge forward to keep from ending up on the floor. I push back through the curtains into the poisonous red light of the lounge and find myself looking straight in to the affected stare of the asshole from earlier in the night. “Watch where you’re going private dirtbag” his words, all carelessness and bravado, don’t even register. Only his smug look and well laundered uniform make an impression. The hiss and crackle in my ears drowns out the tense silence of the room and my vision narrows down at the edges. I try to breath but the exhale never comes. I’m on the guy in an instant. My fists raise a dull wet sound from his face as we fall. A deep primal shriek rises from my chest as horrified onlookers keep their curious distance. The dude falls almost lifeless, trying limply to shield himself from my blows. I have him by the jacket collar and have proceeded to bang his head against the concrete floor when suddenly my vision shorts out with the white hot spark of the tazer. Two giant bouncers each grab one of my arms, lift my slack body off of the asshole and smoothly escort me, without my feet touching the floor, out of the club and back out onto the cold dark street.

I exhale with a painful spasm and the taste of blood as my systems attempt to reboot onto the wide web casting my world into the drab gray and muffled silence of unfiltered reality. As I lay splayed out on my back across the crumbling sidewalk, I watch the moon hover low and luminous just above Manhattan’s distant buildings. I shudder a bit from the cold as the adrenaline dissipates. Though the subway hasn’t run for years, I swear I hear a train in the distance. There are phantom trains running through the black night as I lie alone in the street trying to decide whether I should close my eyes and wait here for death or pick myself up and go looking for it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kelcey Wells is a Brooklyn based writer of poetry and fiction.

He shakes out his demons on the blog Night Thief Confessional and is currently at work  on his first novel, tentatively titled Time Stretched.

“What I don’t understand is how you can live like that,” Ashford Brookes said, “It’s not right.”

“Right?” Bob Wistman asked, “How can any man say how I choose to live my life is wrong or right? My own business is my own and the meddlers can go to the devil if they think they can change me.”

Brookes leaned back in his chair and raised his glass to his lips. The orange glow of the fire flickered on his craggy features and glittered in the darkness of his watery eyes. He sighed with exasperation. This wasn’t the first time he’d tried to offer his young friend advice, nor did he think it would be the last. Robert Wistman’s decision to build a farmhouse out on the moor had caused more than a few eyebrows to be raised. When his young niece moved in to help tend the livestock the more conservative folk in the town expressed their concern that a fine young maid should be living alone with her bachelor uncle. Tongues began to wag when the suggestion that Wistman and his niece shared the same bed began to circulate. Wistman made no attempt to quash these rumours, even confiding to his closest friends in Thainsbridge that now he had young Joy’s company he was no longer interested in searching for a wife.

Joy remained somewhat of an enigma to the townsfolk. She was rarely seen in town and when she was it was always in the company of her uncle. She was quiet and said little more than a few words to any that dared greet her. She always dressed in the simplest of clothes and kept her eyes downcast. Many said that it was a shame that such a beautiful girl should be so introverted, shunning the company of those her own age.

Brookes poured the last of the gin into Wistman’s glass and looked at his flushed round face.

“And the girl,” he asked, “What does she wish for?”

Wistman sniffed and waved a dismissive hand at the question as though swatting an irksome fly.

“I am lucky enough to have found a companion who is entirely beholden to my wishes and no other,” he said proudly, “My niece is happy when I am happy.”

“And marriage?” Brookes ventured.

“A needless expense,” Wistman snorted, “We are no more living in sin than the rams and ewes that frolic on my land.”

“Your land?” I was led to understand that you have recently allowed your sheep to roam out past the boundaries of the farm.”

“What of it? There is nothing on the moors for miles around, just a few ruined dwellings and that circle of old stones. What harm can they do?”

Wistman drained the contents of his glass and rose to his feet. Brookes followed his friend to the door where he bade him farewell. The old man shook his head as he watched Wistman stagger into the darkness.

“Adolescentum verecundum esse decet,” he muttered.

“What’s that you say?”

“Something Plautus said about the pride of young men,” Brookes answered.

“You can tell Plautus to keep his nose out of my business an’ all!” Wistman laughed.

#

The walk from Thainsbridge to his house on the moor normally took Wistman a little over an hour. In his inebriated state, however, it took significantly longer. Swaying from side to side, he whistled tunelessly to himself to fill the dead silence of night.

The lights of the town faded into the distance and he followed the beaten track of the Plymouth road until it reached the crossroads at Gallows Hill. There he turned off the main road and followed a rough footpath across the empty expanse of the moor.

With no light to guide him Wistman was grateful that the moon was full and the night was clear. He had not anticipated the lengthy stopover at the house of Ashford Brookes but neither did he resent it. The older man’s company was always pleasant and he had been more than generous with the drinks. Wistman had no doubt that Joy would be concerned by his tardiness but he had better things to do than concern himself with the feelings of a woman. His flock of sheep had survived the cold winter without incident and were almost ready to be relieved of their winter coats. Thirteen lambs had been born to him that April and though their number could be seen as unlucky by some superstitious souls, not one of them had fallen prey to poachers or predators.

He pulled his coat about him and strode onwards, making sure he did not stray off the path. Night swathed the moorland, smothering the rugged landscape about him in deep shadow. A flicker of light in the distance caught his eye and as he stared in its direction, he realised that it came from the ancient stone circle where a number of his sheep grazed.

“Poachers,” he spat, “Thievin’ bastards, takin’ what’s not theirs.”

Seething with rage, he stepped off the path and hurried over the waterlogged heath in the direction of the campfire. Drawing closer, he could see the silhouettes of the huge standing stones and the eerie, distorted shadows created by the dancing flames. There was no sound other than the wind howling across the open moor but he began to smell the sweet aroma of roasting meat. Wistman had not realised how hungry he was until the smells of cooking reached him. His mouth began to water and his stomach grumbled noisily.

Approaching the stone circle, he saw the small fire over which large chunks of meat roasted on a spit. Sizzling fat dripped into the flames and the aroma lingered in the air. Wistman looked around but saw nobody. Overcome by the tantalising scent, he stepped towards the spit wondering who would abandon such an appetising feast.

The growl came from behind and stopped him in his tracks. Turning cautiously, he saw a large black dog step out of the darkness surrounding one of the monoliths. The dog’s hackles were raised and glistening white fangs were exposed when it snarled. Wistman froze, his heart pounding in his chest with such force he wondered whether the fearsome beast could hear it.

The creature’s growls were joined by another, then another. Wistman moved his head to glance around and saw two more hounds, both as large and as ferocious as the first. The dogs flanked him and moved steadily closer, their resolute gaze not leaving him for a moment. Their coats were glossy black and the firelight reflected in their dark eyes, adding to their demonic presence.

Wistman swallowed drily and felt a trickle of cold sweat run down his spine. He wanted to run, to turn and flee from the stone circle but he knew that his legs would not obey. Paralysed with fear, he watched the three hounds move closer.

“Pay them no mind, Mister Wistman,” a voice called out, “They won’t harm you so long as I’m here.”

A figure emerged from behind the largest monolith and swaggered over to the fire. He was tall and thin. Dressed entirely in black, a tattered wide-brimmed hat obscured his face from view. There was a clatter as the stranger deposited the bundle of sticks he carried onto the ground before he skipped over to where Wistman stood.

“Hope they didn’t give you too much of a fright,” the man chirped, “I’m guessin’ they was just worried you were fixin’ on liftin’ their supper.”

“Who are you?” Wistman asked, “How do you know my name?”

The stranger removed his hat and gave an elaborate bow, his green eyes sparkling in the darkness.

“I’m not one for formal introductions.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Doing?” the man shrugged as he fed more sticks into the fire, “Nothing much. Cooking a spot of supper and minding my own business.”

“And the meat?” Wistman pointed at the spit, “Where did you get that from?”

“It’s not one of your precious sheep, if that’s what you’re implying.”

The stranger hummed to himself as he examined the spit and began to pull off the chunks of meat. He whistled through crooked teeth and the three monstrous hounds ran over to his side. Wistman watched with disgust as the man threw a few pieces of meat to the dogs who then proceeded to bark and snap at one another over the scraps.

The stranger crouched down and chewed thoughtfully on a mouthful of meat whilst staring at Wistman. They remained this way until Wistman grew uncomfortable and broke the silence.

“You still haven’t told me your name.”

“Haven’t I?” the man spoke with his mouth full, “Help yourself to the food.”

Wistman tentatively plucked a piping hot piece of meat from the spit and juggled it in his hands until it was cool enough to eat. The meat was tough and stringy but tasty enough. The stranger watched him as he ate, a thin smile visible beneath the brim of his hat. Wistman crammed the last morsel into his mouth and chewed noisily.

“It’s good,” he said, sucking the grease off his fingers.

“Have more, by all means.”

Wistman beamed gratefully and pulled another piece from the spit. The alcohol had roused his appetite and he wolfed the food down as though afraid the stranger would take it back. It was only after his third helping that he felt sated and made himself comfortable on the grass. The stranger sat on the opposite side of the fire and gazed into the flames. For a while the only sounds that could be heard were the crackling of the sticks and the occasional whine of the hounds. The silence was broken when the stranger looked up and focused on Wistman.

“Do you love her?” he asked.

“Love who?”

“Your niece,” the man spoke impassively, “Do you love her?”

“Love is for little girls and poets,” Wistman snorted, “I don’t believe in it.”

The stranger nodded and sat quietly for some time, as if reflecting on Wistman’s words.

“What do you believe in?” he asked eventually.

“Only what I can hold in my own hands. Money, good food, a warm body,” he chuckled lasciviously, impressed with his wit.

“Do you hunger for nothing else?”

“What more does a man desire?”

“The satisfaction of others.”

“Oho!” Wistman roared with laughter, “That’s rich indeed! Since when has a man been happy serving others? I am wholly content with my life and I am answerable to no-one.”

The man shook his head solemnly.

“You misunderstand me. One does not have to serve another to share happiness. Sometimes we do it without realising.”

“Then how can one tell and why would it matter?” Wistman yawned.

The stranger did not rise as Wistman pushed himself to his feet. He looked up as Wistman stretched and glanced at his pocket-watch.

“Going so soon?” he asked.

“It’s late,” Wistman answered, “And I’m tired. I must be leaving. Thank you for the food.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

Though the remainder of the walk to his cottage passed without incident, Wistman’s thoughts were entirely taken up by his meeting with the mysterious stranger. It was only after walking for some distance did he realise that the man had never revealed his identity. Glancing over his shoulder he saw the distant campfire blazing in the darkness. How had the man known so much about him? He had not recognised the fellow and from listening to his accent he was certain that he was not local. He repeated the conversation over and over in his mind. Why had the man been so interested in him? The probing questions he had been asked had proven surprisingly difficult to answer. He pondered the encounter for some time and concluded that the stranger had been some kind of itinerant preacher out to do good. It was likely that the preacher had heard of him from one of the loose-tongued women of Thainsbridge and had decided to lead Robert Wistman back to the path of righteousness.

“Bad luck, holy man,” Wistman belched, “I’m far too comfortable to be changin’ my ways.”

He staggered on, his mind groggy with drunkenness and his stomach gorged with food. By the time he reached the cottage he was not surprised that there were no lights left on inside. Joy had probably tired of waiting for him and had taken herself to bed. He chuckled to himself as he thought of slipping into their warm bed and running his hands over her lithe young body.

Stepping into the house, Wistman expected to feel the warmth of the fire but was somewhat taken aback to see that the hearth had been untended all night. He blundered about in the darkness until he laid his hands on a lantern. Fumbling with the matches, Wistman swore at them volubly, unconcerned that his curses would disturb Joy. He breathed a sigh of relief when he was finally able to get the lantern lit, but this sigh quickly became a strangled cry when the darkened room was flooded with light.

Everywhere he looked were signs of a ferocious struggle. Broken furniture and smashed crockery carpeted the floor and drops of blood speckled the ruins. Horrified by the sight before him, Wistman’s legs fell from beneath him and he clutched the wall for support. He slumped to the ground and edged forward on all fours, his breath coming in sobs as he saw the butchered form in the next room. Joy lay on her back, her long blonde tresses soaking in the blood that pooled about her body. Pale eyes gazed emptily at the ceiling, her open mouth testament to her agonising final moments. His mind ran back to the stranger and the peculiar meal they had shared in the stone circle. A note was pinned to her chest and once Wistman had read it, he ran screaming into the night, wild eyed with terror and revulsion. A few words were scrawled on the paper in a spidery, untrained hand.

“Thank you for sharing your Joy. Sometimes we do it without realising.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I’m an aspiring novelist, currently living in the windswept Outer Hebrides with my wife, daughter and Europe’s stupidest greyhound. I have previously been published online and in “Crossed Genres” magazine.

The psychiatrist I’d been seeing, a lovely woman by the name of Dawn, with a face pale as the moon and hair like sky between the stars at midnight, she liked to trick me every time we had a session. She would ask me those questions she reserved for her clients, the $250-an-hour housewives, the pro bono cases at the clinic. “Were you abused as a child?” Or the fall back, “How was your relationship with your mother?” Between the sheets, she’d laugh and break confidentiality.

The one question she never asked in jest was, “How are you sleeping?” This was after our dalliance, always, as the sweat dried cool on our skin, as we caught our breath.

Together on my lunch break, we occupied her bedroom as her husband worked across town, and she asked again, her voice calm, soothing in her practiced tone, giving nothing else away. “How’ve you been sleeping?”

“Fine,” I said. A lie. I never approached the topic of the dreams with her, the form unseen.

“Is work all right?” With her finger she traced a small circle on the center of my chest.

“Yeah. You know, I had a weird customer this morning.”

“Weird how? Like, someone I’d schedule a meeting with?”

“Maybe. You might know him, actually.”

“Uh-oh,” she laughed. “How’s that?” Her hand went underneath the covers. I pretended not to notice.

“He’s a professor in the History department over there.”

“I don’t see too many teachers. They can afford to pay, but not what I charge.”

“True. He’s a regular of mine. James Rebadow.”

“A numismatic, huh?” she asked.

“Yeah. The way he told me, he’s obsessed with the pre-Civil War era. Man loves any coin he can get from then, which is good for me. He’s helped out on a few months of rent. He’s got a hard-on for the first ten years of the Longacre three-cent piece. I’ve almost gotten him the full set.”

“I bet he loves you.”

“Everyone does,” I said. She was quiet. “He was there waiting on me this morning when I went to open the store. He’s normally in on Friday afternoons, not Mondays, but I figure, I don’t know, he got out of class early.” If I ever asked anything about her husband, it would be if he ever compliments her smile. “He looks rough, like he hasn’t slept all weekend.”

“Hmm.”

“Yeah. Anyway, he’s got his entire collection with him. Says he has an emergency that’s come up, needs the money, and wants to sell the whole caboodle. Has to be a damn big emergency, he’s easily bought over ten-thousand from me the last couple years.”

“Wow.”

“Since I couldn’t make it to the bank on Friday,” I said, causing her to hide the flush of her face in the crook of my arm, “I had enough for him. He said he would be back for it all, that it was a temporary situation, and he would buy it back in a week. I say to him, ‘I’ve got eight that I can front you right now.’”

“What are you, a loan officer?”

“Unofficially. I say, ‘I can promise not to sell these if you can promise you’ll pay me back next week.’ I didn’t even get into the interest and he jumped. He’s puts this old satchel that he brought the coins in up on the counter, and he’s so damn eager for the cash he’s practically dancing. I go back to the safe in the office, count out the money, and when I get back up there, he’s gone, just gone, and the satchel is right where he left it, and there’s a twenty-thousand dollar collection of coins and this dusty,.”

“Christ,” she says, her eyes large at the mention of the money.

“Yeah. He gave me his number a while back, on the chance I got anything in that might pique his interest. I give him a call and nothing, no answer. Call him again, nada. Third time, though, and he sounds like he’s in a damn wind tunnel. ‘Sorry, I had to run,’ he said. I ask him about the coins, and he says, ‘Keep them as collateral,’ and he hangs up.”

“So, what, he just leaves you with twenty grand and a book?”

“Twenty grand and one hell of an old book. Handwritten. Says it was written in 1702. The thing is in French, and I can’t make heads or tails of it.” I get up and out of the bed to go to my briefcase, and it’s so cold away from her. I brought the book over to show her. “Cultes des Goules, by Comte d’Erlette,” I say

“Cults of Ghouls,” she says.

“Hmm?”

“That’s what the title means. Cults of Ghouls. Looks like an old grimoire or something.” She reaches for it as I get back in her bed. Carefully, she flips through the archaic tome. “You know, this could be worth something. To a collector, I guess.”

“I guess.” I take the old thing from her as I softly kiss her neck, right at her pulse. It beats three times before I break contact, and go back to the book. “It looks like Rebadow decided to do a little defacing. Probably knocks a few grand off the street value.” I turn midway through the folio, to a page marked with a deep, dark red ink counter to the fading prose. A sentence, indecipherable to me, is underlined, and beside it, Rebadow had written, “The Black Guild?”

“Mean anything to you?” she asks.

“Unless it has to do with coins, or certain parts of your body,” I said, placing the book on her bedside table, “it’s voodoo to me.”

* * *

After one last session, I leave her, and her husband’s, apartment. After grabbing a quick bite from the sandwich shop three suites down, I go to the store through the front door, same as ever, reengaging the lock as I go inside. The alarm started in the back, same as ever. Around the display counter and past the living room tableau of a leather couch and matching chair around a coffee table covered in old magazines and newspapers and full ashtrays, all in front of the television that serves as an alter to whoever wants to use it. I go past it all to the office in the back. Never have used the back door, but that’s where the alarm panel is set. I enter four digits and the alarm goes silent. Set the briefcase in the desk’s chair and bend down for the till in the lower drawer, and something breaks the routine.

In the exact center of my desk, there is a business card beside a human eye.

The card is Rebadow’s, with a thumb print in blood over his name.

My cell phone vibrates in my pocket. Unable to take my eyes from the gore, my stomach muscles seizing, I put the phone to my ear. “Hello?” I say, weakly.

A voice like the buzzing of bees says, “We want the book.” After ten seconds of silence on my end, it repeated the sentence in the same horrific modulation, and the line went dead. The number is Rebabow’s.

My stomach lurched again, and I was bent over my trashcan, hacking and coughing up bile the color of grain.

Once the dry heaves pass, and my legs go steady, I grab the briefcase, the damned book the voice demanded tucked inside. I press the code into the security panel again, and go for the front door, unlocking it and slamming it shut, shaking the thick glass on the metal hinge. In the afternoon sun, my stomach quaked again. I lock the door and run to my car, tossing the briefcase into my passenger seat. Turn the ignition and slam the accelerator to the floor. Out on the road, I go down Independence, towards my apartment.

That’s where I keep my gun.

* * *

I never told Dawn about my dreams. Never told anyone. I can’t say ‘dreams’, though. There’s just the one dream, the only one I can ever remember. The only one that repeats.

I shut and locked the door as soon as I got home. Three locks, each one set. I replaced the apartment’s front door as soon as I signed the lease. Anyone could have kicked it in. The new one was three inches thick of solid oak. Coupled with the locks, and the specially installed security system, my place was impenetrable.

I dropped the briefcase on the kitchen table on my way to the bedroom, straight for the nightstand. At all times, the pistol is in the nightstand, oiled and loaded. I keep my rare pieces here, not at the store. The pieces only connoisseurs even know to ask for. The 1969 Lincoln cent with the obverse struck twice, thirty-five thousand to the right bidder, that’s pocket change. The most valuable ones are the silver eagle-sized slugs, each one with a swastika stamped on one side, the coins that, according to macabre rumormongers, are made of the gold teeth pulled from the bleeding mouths of the Holocaust. Blood money. One of those would cover for three months rent, both the apartment and the store, with plenty of spending money left. They’re one of the reasons I don’t humor the thought to call the police.

With the gun heavy in my hand, I go back to the front door, glance through the peephole.

No one.

The whole building is quiet. I keep thinking that I can hear that damn voice, like bees, so I turn the television on, the volume up.

From above the refrigerator, I grab the nearest bottle of unopened bourbon. Like I always do when I’m drinking alone, I pull straight from the mouth. The burn slows my heartbeat to a steady thump I can hear above the television.

Forcing a calm manner, I take the bottle with me to the kitchen table, and faced with the choice of holding the gun or the drink, I choose the gun. Placing the bourbon on the table, with one hand I open my briefcase, and pull out the tome. Holding it under my arm, I grab the bottle and go into my wreck of a bedroom. Dawn never comes here. None of the women do. I take another sip, and another, as much as I can drink.

Sitting back on the bed, the gun in my lap and the bottle on the nightstand, I use the light of my lamp to look through the book, the red leather binding, the frail paper, the barely readable script. I recognize a few words in French, very few. Some of them are wrong, though. A mixture of syllables that have no analogs in English, or any other Latin-based language near as I can tell. The letters shouldn’t go that way, words that would twist my tongue even if I hadn’t drank a quarter of the bottle. I try to sound one of them out, a hard C, and that’s as far as I got when I cell phone rings, shaking against my leg through the pocket.

The caller ID says “Rebadow.” I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t answer, but I can’t stop myself.

That same wrong voice, those foul sounds that shouldn’t be words. The human mind finds order in chaos. Shapes in the stars. Jesus Christ in the rings of a tree. “We want the book” in the sounds of bees.

* * *

That dream, that nightmare, it’s always the same. The funny damn thing about it, it’s like I’m awake whenever it happens. It feels as if I’m waking up from the stupor of sleep, staring into the black nothing above, around me. It’s never normal darkness, but an absence, of light, of everything; it’s an abyss like the dead of space. If Heaven is the glory of the presence of God, then Hell is the annihilation of being, a disconnect, like the nothing they say there was before Creation. I’m awake, I’m conscious, even though I don’t know my name, I don’t know if I exist at all. I don’t have a body, I’m just there, in the space where there should be stars, it’s me, and that’s all, except for a shift, a shape out past where even light could stretch. Beyond the dark, there is something coming forth, and if it was God, then I grew to fear Him.

* * *

I didn’t even know I was asleep and the claustrophobic expanse of nothing was closing in on me. Prone on my bed, the afternoon light that had been pouring in through my window the last time I opened my eyes was gone. There was nothing to see outside.

Trying to sit up, it’s the sound of bees that replacing the trembling silence, and a limb comes from the dark to my chest, forces me against the mattress.

Instinctively I struggle against the obstacle, but it’s stronger than me, than a man should be, crushing me back.

The only light to be had is from the alarm. In the nothing that was there is a face, a crude imitation of a man’s. My brain beats against my skull with the effort of giving that thing order, of trying to understand it. Its flesh was the color of bloody bile, its triangular face more crustacean than man. “We want the book,” the vibration from the phone, that damnable sound shook everything from me, and I tried to scream as something like an antenna thrusted, hot and wrong, down my throat. I try to think of anything else, something normal, the sessions with Dawn, finding a 1970-S Lincoln with a doubled die obverse in my change at the coffee shop, anything not the thing on top of me, the falling over me.

In the darkness that came over me, the nothing of before the stars was everything and then there was a droning, starting low, then working its way up, louder and louder as the shape in the dark approached, got closer than every before, and it wasn’t God, it was worse than that, and I tried to scream but there was nothing to scream with, no body, nothing between the shape and me, nothing to stop it, nothing at all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Deal has published several poems and short stories around the internet, most recently Glasgow Simile in Darkest Before the Dawn and four poems in Bicycle Review.  He also regularly writes about literature at Creative Loafing.  He has several stories and poems coming out in the months to come, and will be publishing a collection of micro-stories through Brown Paper Publishing in early 2010.  You can find him online at cdeal.blogspot.com

‘C’mon, girl. Eat up.’ A speck of pink falls onto his napkin. ‘I didn’t order somethin for you to look at.’

‘I’m vegetarian.’ I adjust the strap of my dress and wish I’d brought a sweater. He’s been staring at my chest the entire meal, smile a gash on his drink-bloated face.

‘But, I got it in good confidence you do in fact like meat.’ His teeth scrape the metal prongs of the fork when he shoves in more steak. Chews on one side, gives me the I’ma fuck you nasty smirk with the other. I whisper a prayer to the patron saint of heart attacks then flag down our waiter and point to my glass.

‘Another, Madame?’ He has surgeon’s hands, slender ice-picks with manicured nails. His cheekbones are effeminate and I’m positive he exfoliates.

‘Extra dirty.’ I give him a polite smile, exhale to remove the alcohol tang of his imposter cologne. ‘Thank you.’

This brings a juvenile guffaw from the cowboy pederast across from me. He grabs the poor boy by the elbow. ‘Another of your fine cognacs, too, champ.’ The waiter scampers off.

His jowls wobble with each grunting laugh. He slaps his thigh. ‘Extra dirty,’ he says, wiping the corner of his eye with his napkin. The cloth falls over his hand like a cheap Halloween ghost. His left hand looks dead, alien. A distinct line across his wrist just below the cuff and the flesh is a different shade. ‘Damn, I knew you was freaky, but shit.’

My hand curls around the fork and I want nothing more than to sink it into his cheek and tear until I can see the back of his throat then tell him his last comment didn’t even make sense. Instead, I smile at him and bite my bottom lip, then stand and excuse myself to the bathroom. I can feel his eyes on my ass.

Fishtanks sunk into the wall of the restaurant. Blobs of electrified color zip in every direction, a handful of tetras and surgeonfish imported from the Indian Ocean. Translucent anemones wave their fingers in the current. Strewn across the floor of the tank, diamonds, rubies and emeralds sparkle in the light. A striped clownfish trembles inside a coral hollow, both a sanctuary and a prison. Oh I wish, I wish, I was a fish.

The maitre ’de gives a slight bow and assures me that if he can assist Madame Wren in any way to please not hesitate to ask. Thin wisps of white at the edge of his hair, probably pancake makeup from his Halloween costume, even though All Souls Day passed and he’s been wearing that for more than 48 hours. A train of waiters pass me, some flaming concoction held above their heads. They’re villagers on the way to reduce their monster to ash and cinder. For a second, I imagine tripping the first, splattering the fire-cake all over the corpse patrons and their mummified wives. I can see them holding me by the ankles and wrists and tossing me into the back alley, a body rolled up in a carpet, the Cowboy fuck still sitting at the table and chewing his steak. I blink and thank the maitre ’de for his hospitality.

‘And please,’ he says, ‘give my best to Monsieur Elroy.’

Inside the bathroom, my reflected hand smacks my cheek. ‘Fucking cow. Get yourself together.’ The sting of a razor glove and my face looks like a radioactive peach. The air smells of static electricity. ‘Goddamn you, bitch. You’re going to ruin this fucking contract.’ I lean down and trace the patterns of the marble counter as I snort three lines of the Sweet Lady. Serenity drips behind my nose, down my throat. The stone must be only an inch thick but has the illusion of infinity, flying over the crystal ocean. Warm water covers my body as the drug merges with my blood. You tell me you love me, Elroy, and you let me poison myself. You allow me the delusion of control.

I let my eyelids drift shut and feel my breath ebb and flow. You’re good, Wren. You’re fucking aces. The room materializes before me. I sample hand lotion from the woven basket and go back to work.

The table is like my life, everything about the same when I return. The only alteration is that the steak on my plate is now on his and there is an extra martini. My napkin, folded into a delicate linen swan. This is the type of restaurant that Elroy always books my appointments. He says that investors need to see the charming side of Baltimore, but without the risk of a drive-by. I’d told him to give the investor strong pot and a Welcome Brochure and he told me to go fuck myself. At least in the restaurant, as opposed to the brochure, the drinks are strong and the lotion isn’t oily. And, it goes on the city’s tab.

He flicks his head in my direction. ‘You feeling better, sugartits?’ This motherfucker holds half the oil in Texas but leaves us to pick up the bill, and he has the nerve to insult me.

‘Much,’ I nod, all smiles and come hither.

That fucking smirk again and I breathe deep, swallow the urge to turn his face into hamburger. He skewers four hunks on his fork, shoves them in his mouth, twists his wrist and it only now occurs to me that the hand isn’t dead, it’s a prosthesis. ‘Think it’s time for desert, then.’

I shake my head and bite the nail on my pinkie. ‘Just drinks, actually.’

He snorts when he laughs. ‘Yeah, whatever you say.’

The Cowboy possesses the manners of a Neanderthal rapist and the night bellman has to hurry over and open the hotel door for us. He’s a shrunken man with hair like cigarette ash and skin dark as burnt coffee. I can never remember his name, but a few times I’ve encountered him after securing an investor and the stories he tells might make even Elroy blush. He doesn’t mind, either, that I’ve introduced myself with at least eight different names.

‘Evenin’ y’all.’ He gives an exaggerated bow and tips a phantom hat. ‘I’s was findin’ myself lonely without ya.’

The Cowboy snickers, a kid who’s seen his first tit on late-night TV and I find the bellman’s act equal parts admirable, ingenious and sad. He pulls back the rusted gate of the elevator and motions for us to enter. The Cowboy presses his erection against my hip when he passes. This makes him snicker, as well.

‘We tried to get the rat from Muppets to work the switch, but damned if he don’t have hisself a good agent.’ Every time you get in the elevator, and it’s still funny.

He pushes the button for our floor and we rise. Behind the Cowboy’s back, the bellman gives me a wink and I purse my lips to not laugh and keep our joke inclusive. Tarnished brass and dead flies in the lights, melted carpet from dropped cigarettes.

When the elevator groans to a halt, he bids us a good evening with a slight salute. Half the hallway sleeps in shadows, burned-out lights hugging the walls. The faint scent of polish. I walk in front of the Cowboy, traipsing the delicate edge between lust and fit-to-be-raped. The pattern of the carpet is hypnotizing and I find myself concentrating on this repetition whenever I’m here. Elroy always insists on this hotel, too, but I’ve never been able to figure out why. An old favor is all he ever says.

He opens the door with a grunt and I hesitate on the periphery. Touch the round imprint of the compact in my purse, imagine the Sweet Lady holding my hand. I step through the threshold with a manufactured smile.

‘Do you have Tangueray or—’ my words collide with his tongue in my mouth. Charred grease and flesh. It tries to stab through the back of my throat. I push away but his hand grapples my neck. I relax, the way a zebra does when caught in the jaws of an obese and socially-inept lion, and allow him to grope me. He kneads my breasts, a baker preparing bread.

I tune in Morrissey on the radio station in my head, imagine his celibate fingers twirling my hair into curls as he recites Yeats and talks about impossible things in that winsome British way. He purrs in my ear and the combination of him and my Sweet Lady start to lift me away from my body. My blood fades to a distant trickling creek, contorted backwards, swishing through a body craned over a bed as a rabid hippopotamus ravages, and the Cowboy’s teeth in my neck whiplash me away from Morrissey back to reality. As he loosens his bolo tie, I dart away and peruse the top of his dresser for liquor. He grunts behind me, breathing from exertion. I hope he enjoyed his groping because touching my underwear is not on the schedule for the evening.

‘Any Maker’s Mark?’ I run a finger across the dresser’s edge.

A flash of silver in his toiletry bag, shaped to a point. I start to open it and he snatches it away, grumbles something and sets two glasses on the sink. The glass on porcelain is a rifle-crack. Ice cubes tinkle and shatter when he fills the glass.

‘Here,’ and he hands me half a glass of something blue.

I arch an eyebrow but sip anyway. It’s sweeter than Kool-Aid and could singe my hair.

‘I thought we could at least talk for a while. A great man like you, I’m sure you have a lot of interesting stories. The pinnacle of entrepreneurship, I’d venture to say.’

‘Hell, I don’t know nothing bout pinochle, but yeah, I’ve seen some things.’ He downs his glass, all cocky-bastard-like, and pours another.

‘You’ve made so many great deals and…’ My mouth continues to stroke his ego while my brain drifts away on a helium cloud. I can’t remember if I bought more food for my fish. I got feeder fish for the piranhas, then ran into some guy who said he knew me—which, in Baltimore, is never uncommon—and I was headed to the food aisle but might’ve been diverted towards the register. Shit, I hope I got food. Otherwise I’ll need to go in the morning so they don’t starve and I’d like to sleep in. A rumble snares my attention. The Cowboy covers his mouth in embarrassment while pouring another drink and his belch floats across the room like a cloud of homemade napalm. His cheeks flushed and a smile across his grill, he looks reasonably good, scumbag quotient aside. He’s enjoying himself and I should be able to end this appointment soon.

‘Sorry, darling. I didn’t mean to do that in the presence of a lady. Just slipped out.’ He pounds a fist on his chest and belches again, no embarrassment this time. ‘So’s anyway, that’s how I came to contact Mister Elroy.’ He pauses, waiting for me to add some humorous anecdote. I have no idea what he’s been talking about so I take a sip from my glass. The liquid is now brown and I don’t remember him pouring another but I drink it anyway.

‘We like to get to know our investors before taking up projects together. It’s only good business, you know.’ I cross the room to the window and swing my hips harder than normal, shift my weight to one leg so my dress hugs the bottom curve of my ass and a tattooed tiger paw hangs belong the silk hem. Revealing enough to sign, but still restrained to stay safe.

Couples stagger across Fells Point square, arms over shoulders, hands under shirts. A man with one leg holds out his cup, hopping and doing what looks to be some kind of swing dance. The couples pass him and he falls back on a bench, stares up at the stars with a smile on his face. Halloween trash flutters along the ground like discarded butterflies. The Cowboy’s breathing is audible, the sound of compliance. I’ve drawn him in and he’ll invest with us, if nothing else than to take another meeting in the hopes of seeing me naked. Sorry to disappoint, but I highly doubt it, partner.

‘How are you finding Baltimore? This is your first visit, right?’

‘Lots of money to be made round these parts. This here city’s a big pussy waitin to be fucked.’

‘Charming,’ and I don’t bother to tell him that analogy has the wrong connotation and making repeated references to genitals won’t help them spontaneously appear. ‘Have you had a chance to meet with Elroy in person yet?’

In the window reflection, he knocks back the rest of his drink in a breath, a metallic flash at his wrist, removing his watch. He steps towards me, licking his lips. My stomach fills with broken glass and bone shards. Hair stands at attention and I can feel sticky sweat on the back of my neck.

‘Had some sight-seein to take care of first.’

And before I can set down my drink, there’s a cool breeze as he yanks my dress above my waist. I slap at it and he pushes me into a chair. My stomach, naked and vulnerable. He lays one paw on my pelvis, the other on my shoulder. It’s not a paw, and it wasn’t his watch he was taking off: It was a metal claw he was putting on, a sharpened gardening implement attached at the wrist and what the fuck is going on? My blood is acid. Invisible ropes wrap around my head as I struggle to sit. He’s staring right at my stomach, the scar on my stomach.

‘Wait.’ I force a smile to my face but it must look horrified. ‘We can stop now and everything’s okay. Nothing. Nothing happened, just some dinner and a few drinks, nothing to worry about.’ The callous on his finger is sandpaper against my skin. ‘But you go any farther and Elroy will have your balls on his rear-view by the end of the week.’

He purses his lips and gust of breath explodes from his nose. ‘I got three pounds of Ben Franklin that say I can fuck you dirty.’

‘What the fuck does that mean?’

A smile infects his face. Burnt meat stuck between his teeth. ‘It means you gonna let me turn you inside-out, and I’m gonna give you enough money to make them problems go away.’ A silver prong traces my scar. ‘All of them.’

I swing my leg at him and my heel connects with his ribs. His grunt wouldn’t stir a fly. ‘I’m not a fucking whore.’

His laugh is an electric eel swimming through my spine. ‘Girl, I had you pegged soon as I laid eyes on you. No, no, mister, I ain’t no ho.’ His voice, high and mocking. Towering over me, I am a twelve-year-old niece in his mind. ‘Okay, then. You ain’t no harlot and I won’t give you no money.’

I blink my eyes and exhale.

‘But I do hope your plumbing don’t work no more.’

My back is electric as he wrenches me upright, hand clutching a knot of hair. Morrissey tries to sing but there’s too much static, I can’t tune him in and my Sweet Lady has gathered her belongings and skipped town. I choke on the smell of rotten meat that pours from the shirt he unbuttons. Cold metal on the back of my neck, he shoves my head down. The bolo tie flashes next to my eye and tears the skin of my cheek. With one hand he unclips his belt buckle and his pants fall. Boxers that were once white and might have been used to apply furniture polish. A hole in the left thigh and the fumes of a bog. His testicles are the size of my fist and that slab of meat with surely choke me. I dig my fingernails into his skin and almost get jabbed in the eye.

‘Yeah, I think I like Baltimore. It’s dirty and the food sucks.’ His fingers relax then tighten on my neck, the claw scratching the discolored tumbleweed on his pelvis. ‘The company ain’t much to desire, but I reckon I’ll like having someplace down here.’

He yanks my head back and his dead-snake eyes paralyze mine. ‘I think I can swallow it.’

And if I disassociate myself, if I close my eyes and open my mouth and think of summertime cookouts in Patterson Park, if I imagine Morrisey or Iggy Pop—fuck, even Elroy—and just get this over with, I’ll be out the door in five minutes and we’ll have his investment and I can tell Elroy I’m going for a spa or massage or to be pierced and strung from wires, whatever the fuck I want because I endured this. But his smug fucking laugh above me, the echoes in a darkened hallway of an abandoned sanitarium, he’s mocking me, he knows he has me and I’m not a whore.

I bite until my jaw hurts.

Hot copper floods my mouth. The shriek of a child watching its pet cat run into an electric fence. Several hairs and a flap of wrinkled skin in my teeth. He topples backwards onto the bed, curled fetal and cupping his testicles. Cursing that might raise some ancient demon. The bedspread changes color, a scarlet halo around his crotch. I wipe my face with the sheet and hurry to the door. A bottle of cologne lies on the floor and I aim at the small of his back. He doesn’t notice. His shrieks have faded to dull moans that come from some pain burrowing deep inside and, finally, we have something in common.

‘I’m not a fucking whore.’

At the edge of the stairwell, I wait for the bellman’s head to descend back into sleep. His feet rest on the reception desk and, behind the bulletproof glass, he has created a tiny womb, comfortable and secure. I envy him and his lack of stupid decisions. He snorts as he nods himself awake and his head begins to drop again. I am but a guilty shadow across the lobby, and I hope the cloud of shame following me doesn’t knock anything over and disturb him.

Two blocks from the hotel and I spy a pay phone inside the Greek Diner on Aliceanna. Cigarette smoke and coffee that smells of copper piping. The man in the booth by the phone piles grey eggs on a limp slice of bread. Next to his hand, a piece of paper with something scrawled in crayon. It might be a treasure map or the schematics of a pipe bomb. I drop two coins and dial Elroy’s number, rubbing the Saint Jude pendant hanging from my neck. The troll behind the counter screams in some vulgar language at a woman pushing an empty stroller. The woman assures the phantom child that everything is okay and wipes a golden tear from her cheek.

‘Who’s dead?’ His voice tumbles through the fog of sleep.

‘You motherfucker.’

‘Oh, well. Evening, Wren.’

‘I’m going to kill you.’ The man in the booth looks up at me and I push a whisper through my teeth. ‘That inbred fuck tried to rape me, you son of a bitch.’

Something on his end clicks and a breeze shivers through the line. ‘You’re fine, though?’ He says it as though he’s exhaling smoke and somehow I’m not surprised by his lack of concern.

‘You need to screen them better, El. This happens again and I’m out. I’m not doing this shit anymore.’

I can hear his smirk through the line. ‘Tell me what happened, darling.’

I swallow bile at the thought but concede anyway. His startled cough interrupts me mid-sentence.

‘You did what to him?’

‘He shoved my face into his bog hole like I was a fucking altar boy. What was I supposed to do?’ I grip the phone until my knuckles ache. The gash on my cheek burns bright blue when I lay my face against the wall. The slash of my blood doesn’t even stand out on the tile. ‘Look, I’ve always done what you asked. I don’t argue with you like Alma and Melody and I don’t ask for anything special. I let you talk me back into the job when I quit and I’m on top of things. But I need to know you have my back. This is the last time.’

A dry cough in the phone and I can imagine him standing in his living room, biting the filter off a Casamir before chaining it from the one between his lips, pouring another bourbon into his Simpsons coffee mug, scratching the hair billowing from the bathrobe that strands him somewhere between Roy Orbison and Hugh Hefner. I imagine his head on my nightstand with a rose in the mouth.

‘Can’t nothing happen to you, darling. You’re the Queen, right?’ I adjust the bottom of my dress and realize how many goosebumps I have. ‘I’m sorry it happened. Really, I’m all tore up. If you want to take a couple days off, go down the ocean or something, that’s fine. Reckon I need to get Alma up on her game anyhows.’

‘I don’t need time off. I need your word that it won’t happen again.’ The woman with the stroller stands in the middle of street, arms extended and face tipped skyward. The streetlight gives her the complexion of a body submerged in water that flows beneath a condemned bridge. ‘I’m serious, the next time something like this happens, there’s no talking. I’m out.’

‘Wren, sweetheart, I promise.’ The purr at the end of his words sets my legs to tingle. ‘It won’t happen again.’

I close my eyes and exhale. ‘Thank you.’

‘And if it ever does,’ he says, ‘I’ll chop off your head.’

My skin is cool, pale marble. ‘What?’

‘You’re my best girl, but you ever pull some shit like that and I’ll have you mounted over my fireplace. You got any idea how many cocks I gotta suck now, just to fix this?’

‘You bastard.’ The diner goes comatose. Hissing on the griddle and the tender tink of a baby tapping a fork against glass. ‘I fuck who I want, when I want. Don’t you ever fucking threaten me again.’

I beat the receiver against the wall until his voice fade to static. The plastic rim hangs from wire strands like an industrial jellyfish. I escape to the outside. Twenty eyes stare at me through the grease-fogged glass of the diner. The woman in the street mutters, praying for ascension. I kick her stroller over and it echoes in the empty street.

‘Give up.’

I slap her face and weave through alleys, as if anyone would be following me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nik Korpon is from Baltimore, MD. He likes to bang on the keyboard until something intelligible comes out, or his head hurts, whichever comes first. His stories have appeared in various places. He reviews books for the Outsider Writer Collective, co-hosts ‘Last Sunday, Last Rites,’ a reading series in Baltimore, and is writing his second novel.

“Come on, honey,” Michael said. “One more good push and he’ll be out.”

Cheryl gave him a look that said, Why don’t you try squeezing a watermelon out of your asshole, and then you’ll know what this is like! Then she sucked in a deep breath and pushed again, her face red and contorted.

But as Michael predicted, the baby slid out, wide-eyed and caked with cheesy vernix. The doctor used an aspirator to clear the baby’s mouth and nose, and when he wailed, it was the most beautiful sound Michael had ever heard.

His son. His Hunter.

Cheryl didn’t care for the name, calling it too aggressive-sounding. But Michael didn’t give two shits what Cheryl thought. It was his son and he’d name him Shit Head if he felt like it. And he’d told her so.

“Would you like to cut the cord?” the doctor asked, offering Michael a pair of scissors.

“Absolutely,” Michael said. He took the silver shears and severed the rubbery length of flesh just below the set of hemostats that were affixed there.

“Congratulations,” the doctor said. He wrapped the baby in a thick blue towel and handed him to his father. Michael looked into his son’s blue eyes, at the small, cherubic face that looked remarkably like his own. His son, a male replica of himself, the one responsible for carrying on the Braddocks name. Although Hunter was only a few minutes old, Michael could already see himself taking him to hockey games at Joe Louis Arena, weekend fishing trips to Houghton Lake where he and Cheryl owned a cabin, car shows at Cobo Hall. Guy stuff.

Cheryl had wanted a girl, but Michael was firmly opposed. He made it clear they would not be having a girl, no fucking way. If the baby was a girl they would abort and try again for a boy. He didn’t care how long it took them, didn’t care if they had to fill an entire dumpster with aborted fetuses. He was going to have his Hunter, end of story.

But the ultra sound had indeed shown boy parts, and Michael was so excited he actually did a celebratory dance right there in the doctor’s office. The technician had laughed, and Cheryl had been embarrassed, but Michael was too happy to care what anyone else thought. He was getting his little boy. He was getting his Hunter.

“Mr. Braddocks,” one of the nurses said, “we’ll need to take the baby’s measurements now.”

Reluctantly, Michael handed the baby to her and said, “Be careful with my little man.”

“We will,” she assured him.

Michael bent down and kissed Cheryl’s sweaty forehead. “How ya feeling?”

“Tired,” she whispered.

“Close your eyes and rest,” he told her.

“Something’s not right,” she said, her words barely audible. “Something’s…” But before she could finish her sentence, her eyes closed and she was asleep, her chest rhythmically rising and falling beneath the purple and white hospital gown.

“Mr. Braddocks,” the doctor called from across the room, “could you come over here, please?”

Michael hurried across the room to where the nurse was weighing Hunter on a scale. “Yeah, doc?”

“Everything looks normal,” the doctor said as he shuffled through some papers in a manila folder. “We’ll just need to know the baby’s name so we can finish filling out the birth certificate.”

“His name is Hunter,” Michael said proudly. “Hunter Sean Braddocks.”

“Hunter?” the doctor said. “Why, there haven’t been hunters in this country for at least a hundred years, not real ones anyway. That’s what grocery stores are for. No, I’m afraid you’ll have to pick something else.”

Michael stared at the doctor in disbelief. Was this guy crazy? Surely, he had to be joking. Doctors just didn’t tell people what they could or could not name their kids. “His name is Hunter,” Michael said more firmly.

The doctor sighed, like an impatient teacher who is tired of dealing with a disobedient pupil. He reached into the manila folder and took out a sheet of paper. He handed it to Michael and said, “Here. You can choose a name from this list.”

Michael took the paper and examined it. On it were two columns, the one to the right a list of boy names, and the one on the left a list of girl names. Both were in alphabetical order. “What the hell is this?” he asked.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of our hospital’s motto, ‘Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow’s Technology?’ Well, this is the tradition part.”

“This is crazy,” Michael said, still staring at the paper. All the names on the list were traditional from A to Z – names like Arnold, Bradley, and Chris for the boys, Alice, Barbara, and Carol for the girls.

“No,” the doctor said. “This isn’t crazy. What’s crazy are the names that people give their children these days – Parker, Hailey, Gunner… Hunter. Can you believe there was a couple here a few months ago who wanted to name their daughter Cupcake? That’s when we decided to take a stand against this rampant dispensing of distasteful names. That’s when we made this list.”

“But you can’t do this,” Michael said, although the quiver in his voice suggested he feared otherwise.

“Of course we can,” the doctor said, sounding slightly amused. “You signed a form agreeing to it. Remember all those documents you filled out when your wife was admitted?”

“But that’s not fair!” Michael said. “She was going into labor! I didn’t have time to sit there and read all the fine print on those fucking forms!”

The doctor put a slender finger to his lips and said, “Shhhh. Remember, you’re in a hospital. I realize this is a stressful situation, Mr. Braddocks, but if you’ll just pick a name we can get this all over with.”

Michael looked around the room at the nurses. They were all staring at him, waiting impatiently. Not knowing what else to do, Michael consulted the document in his hand again. He scanned down to the H’s and read the names: Harold or Henry. What a choice. They sounded like names that Cheryl would pick for a boy. Then it dawned on him that this must be a trick of hers. Of course it was! She’d put the staff up to it to teach him a lesson. Michael chuckled, relieved that this would all be over soon and they could get back to business. “Good one, honey,” he called to the bed where his wife lay motionless. “You really had me going for a minute, but the joke’s over. Honey?”

“She can’t hear you,” the doctor said. “She’s been sedated. We find it much easier to deal with just one parent when it comes to this part of the birthing process.”

Michael looked from nurse to nurse, and then back to the doctor. None of them were smiling. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

As if on cue, a pair of burly male nurses appeared behind Michael like bouncers in white coats. They each grabbed one of his arms and held him so he couldn’t move.

“You’re going to pick a name from that list, Michael,” the doctor said, removing a scalpel from a tray next to the scale. He then put the blade to the baby’s neck.

Michael’s heart leapt. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I brought your baby into this world, Mr. Braddocks. With the flick of my wrist, I can reverse that.”

Michael thought about all of the other children who had been born here over the past few months and forced himself to ask a question, even though he was terrified to know the answer. The words came out in a sick croak: “What happened to the little girl?”

“What little girl?”

“The one who was going to be named Cupcake.”

“She went home with a broken arm and a respectable name.”

“You broke a baby’s arm?” Michael said, nearly choking on the words.

“Her father was stubborn, and like you, he had to be persuaded. Now I’ll ask you one more time,” he said, pressing the blade of the scalpel against the baby’s soft skin. “What’s it going to be?”

Michael stared at the list, finding it difficult to focus with his hand shaking, his eyes blind with rage, and the mediocre names mocking him. But even as he teetered on the brink of a nervous breakdown, he came up with a plan. “So all I have to do is pick a name from this list and it’ll all be over?” he asked.

“You and your lovely family will be on your way home,” the doctor said.

Michael realized that even though he was being forced to choose a name from the doctor’s list, he could have it changed once they were discharged from this crazy hospital, which is what he figured most of the people who had children here did. But he doubted many of them were smart enough to turn the tables on the doctor the way he was about to.

“Okay,” Michael said, now confident that he would have the last laugh. “His name is Nancy.”

“Nancy?”

“It’s on the list. You didn’t say it had to be a boy’s name.”

“I suppose you’re right,” the doctor said.

“Ha!” Michael shouted. “How’s that for traditional, you crazy fuck? Looks like your little plan backfired!”

“On the contrary,” the doctor said. He put the scalpel down and picked up the pair of scissors Michael had used to cut the umbilical cord. “Nancy is a fine name…for a girl.” He then grabbed the baby by the feet, raised him into the air, and in one quick motion, sheared off his genitals.

Michael thrashed against the nurse’s grip as his son wailed and blood rained to the floor. A burning pain erupted in Michael’s left arm. His head swiveled around to find that one of the nurses had stuck him with a hypodermic needle. He suddenly felt woozy, his legs turning to jelly. He watched, unable to do anything but sob, as a nurse placed a little pink bow in Hunter’s hair, and then rushed him out of the room.

“Where is she taking him?” Michael cried.

“Gender reassignment,” the doctor said, as he returned the scissors to the tray.

“YOU BASTARD!” Michael screamed. With a frantic lunge, he tore away from his captors, only to crash to the floor. He tried to pick himself up, but only made it to one knee before collapsing again. A few feet away, in a puddle of blood, lay Hunter’s penis. Michael reached out, but just before he could rescue his son’s amputated member, the doctor’s shoe came down on his wrist, pinning it to the floor. The doctor kneeled down, and with a pair of tweezers he plucked the tiny nub from the pool of gore. He then placed it in a plastic bag labeled BIOHAZARD and said, “I’m afraid Nancy won’t be needing this.”

“His name… is Hunter,” Michael groaned. “Hunter… Sean…” But before he could finish, he was swallowed by darkness. The doctor sighed. He was about to drop the plastic bag into the yellow biohazard container on the wall when he paused. He suddenly had a better idea.

* * *

“Honey,” Michael heard a voice calling above him. He opened his eyes and found Cheryl standing beside him, cradling a baby in her arms. The infant was dressed in pink, a small pink bow tied to a lock of black hair.

He was lying in a hospital bed, but couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there. The last thing he recalled was holding his son. “Where’s Hunter?”

Cheryl looked at him sadly. “Oh, honey, I know how much you wanted a boy, but the ultra sound was wrong. The baby’s a girl.”

“A girl?”

“Don’t you remember? You named her.”

Michael’s head spun, and he was aware of a burning sensation between his legs. “What am I doing in this bed?”

“The doctor said you fainted. He said it was from fatigue. I guess it happens a lot after long labors.”

Michael winced. His crotch felt like someone was poking it with a hot needle. He threw the covers off the bed, pulled up his gown, and found a mound of blood-stained gauze between his legs. His eyes grew wide, mouth went dry, heart raced. With a trembling hand, he peeled the tape off his skin, pulled the gauze away, and gasped at what he saw. His penis and scrotum were gone, replaced by a small, shriveled package of flesh. Hunter’s genitals, the boy parts he’d been so excited to see six months earlier, were now stitched to his crotch, shriveled and sad-looking.

A young couple walked past the room as Michael screamed. The woman, nine months pregnant, clutched her swollen stomach, looked at her husband and said, “All this noise is making Maverick upset.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Reed is the author of more than 50 short stories. His fiction has appeared in a variety of small press publications including Black Ink Horror, Chimeraworld 5, and the Cutting Block Press anthology, Tattered Souls: The Provocative Boundary of Fear, with stories slated to appear in Sex and Murder and OMG! The Book of Awesome Stuff. Aside from writing, he enjoys frozen pizza, Seinfeld reruns, and hockey fights. He lives in Davison, MI, with his photographer wife and their two enigmatic children. Visit his official Web site: www.ChrisReedFiction.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matthew Dexter is an American anomaly living in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. He writes novels, memoirs, poetry, journalism articles, and short stories. When Matthew is not writing he enjoys life by the ocean; beautiful beaches, breathtaking views, reading, and being inspired. But never candlelit dinners on the beach. He’s afraid of Pirates.

Tick-tick.

The inspector has come to feign sleep on the sumptuous white-curtained four-poster canopy bed to solve a series of mysterious deaths.

Five men have died sleeping in this room, and the bodies have disappeared. But the faces of each one were found on the pillow, cooler than the morning air, twisted into a horrible expression, lips curled back, eyebrows arched into the hairline, eyeholes wide as change-purses.

Tick-tick.

The inspector is not afraid. He believes the culprit is a man he has been tracking for many years, who is the vicinity. This master of murder, Jim Whisk, has killed eighty-one people by scaring his victims to death, creating the effect of an overpowering nightmare on his prey. In a fatal dream, the inspector believes, one wakes before one dies, but if the dream were to be realized, the death would follow in actuality. Whether Jim Whisk knows of some universal, primordial fear that never fails to kill the dreaming-self, the inspector does not know.

But the inspector has a secret weapon: He has never dreamed so long as he can remember. He does not even go for fiction, which he thinks is a waste of time. “I have never heard a story that struck me as true,” he tells his literary friends. “And should I ever hear a story that rings true in my heart I believe it will explode into my throat and choke me to death.”

Tick-tick.

Therefore the staging of a nightmare will have little effect on him. Pulling up the covers and resting his large head on a goosedown pillow, he thinks:

“I have never slept on a more comfortable bed in my life. They will not find my eyeholes wide as change-purses come morning.”

Tick.

Indeed, the bed is very soft and supportive and the Sleeping Room is worth every cent. He tries not to fall asleep as he waits for Jim Whisk to arrive. He is confident in his scheme because he can smell traces of his foe’s presence, who always wears a cologne resembling ozone, that afterscent of lightning storms and electric bumper cars…

Tick.

He notices the clock on the dresser ticks too slowly. It is not counting time but something else. The inspector twirls the ends of his moustaches like an insect playing with its antennae, and wonders what. Then he stops, realizing he must remain still as the weary moonlight that has fallen through the window at the foot of the bed and rests like a ghost who has not eaten for seven thousand years between the door and bureau.

The moonlight shifts through the dark hours until it paints the inspector’s face a pale funereal mask. The inspector hears something; or rather doesn’t hear something. The clock, which ticked out of time, has stopped. Perhaps it has wound down? But no: he hears Tick-tick. The sounds come slowly out of the night. He counts six more ticks. Then there is only his breathing, in…out…in…out…The inspector prepares for the murderer and clutches the revolver which he holds loaded to his side beneath the covers. The gun seems to grip him back. He’ll not be Jim Whisk’s eighty-second kill.

In…out…

Has time stopped? The room is cold yet the inspector begins sweating. “I have a fever,” he thinks, but knows it is unlikely. The moonlight is suddenly eclipsed. Fine: a cloud is drifting across the sky.

But a cloud does not have legs, and the shape blocking the window is lowering one, two, three . . . eight legs, the pupil-black body suspended from the ceiling like a suicide. As lunar rays travel 230,600 miles to silhouette the thing he recognizes a spider large as a dog with mandibles like hacked and bloody limbs. Its breath wafts across the room scented with bones, cancers and tumors, gifts no prayer has ever exchanged.

Out…in…out…

He feels his gun solid in his fear-moldy hand. But he wonders: “Have I loaded it? What if I forgot?” The idea is maddening because if he has forgotten, then pulling the gun out quickly may give the spider the advantage. So rather than act he waits and tries to decide what to do. The spider slides forward on its breath. It sits on the inspector’s chest. It grows quickly as a spot where a black wax candle continues to drip and the mattress wails beneath the increasing weight. The inspector’s heart beats so wildly that the bristly abdomen is rocked up and down from the force of so much blood chasing itself in circles.

But still the inspector lives. He may be shaky, but he has his faculties. He decides to try the revolver. The spider opens its mouth wide. Its cracked tongue fills the room so that there are no longer walls, windows, moons. Midnight is a morsel lodged deep in the arctic time zone of its gut. The inspector raises his gun.

Out…in…

Before he can shoot the spider spins out a fine white web that floods the barrel. He cannot fire the gun, he cannot move his limbs. The spider is spinning him round and round and pushes him into the mattress, which he realizes is made entirely from giant silky-smooth webs. He collides with the partially digested and preserved bodies of other men.

Out…

Suddenly the inspector is twisted about and his face is removed by careful black spider-hands. The pain is incredible, the story is true, and he gags on his heart. The spider plunges him back into the bed face to face with a man without a face but who has the unmistakable smell of Jim Whisk.

“Comfy,” he hisses. “But can’t sleep…”

The spider finishes making the bed, pulls the covers on tightly and places the sixth face on the pillow. In the mattress, the eggs crack open and the hungry young crawl—

Out.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I am a writer from New York whose work has appeared in The Absinthe Literary Review, New York Stories, Trunk Stories, and The Midnighter’s Club Anthology. A short story of mine is also currently available at Saucytooth’s Webthology.

The dog would not die. He was bred to withstand the rigors of a prolonged fight, and he showed his mettle and he showed his heart in that moment when it counted most. The end. He was the best dog that Simmons ever owned and he owned plenty. Some were bigger and some were smarter, but none were as sweet with the children and none were as tough.

He kneels beside him to stroke his head. He looks into the dog’s eyes and beyond them. He stares at the ground where he lies bleeding and breathing still. He runs his fingers through what had once been the finest soil in all of west Texas. The earth here is dead now, but the dog will not die with it.

He stands in the high sun and casts upon him his own small shadow. He takes aim, and the pistol bucks again. The dog flops up and curls like a fish, and his eyes wall in that strange manner they all did after he laid them down and just before they gave up the ghost. The eyes – dogs, deer, men. It’s always the same. He’s seen too many in the moment of passage. The iris slowly rises, the whites climb like the moon, and blank go the orbs of perception, they roll up and back, up and beyond, searching for some meaning in a last, futile attempt to make sense through sense.

He is a big bear of a dog and the children named him Clyde after that orange monkey in the Clint Eastwood picture where he fought men for money bare-fisted in honky-tonks and where in the end he almost died himself for the heart of a girl. He was still-born to a gorgeous dam whose paper-name was Gold Nugget Princess Eileen. They called her Sadie. There were four pups in the litter but only one survived, the smallest and it was Clyde. Simmons wiped away the mucous himself with the palm of his hand and blew into the nose of the runt like he was inflating a small balloon. He was a sickly pup. He was weak but he was alive. The girls made him peanut butter sandwiches on raisin bread to give him strength and fed him ice scream from a spoon. They gave him cookies and Cheerios and he grew so big around the middle that it was no surprise he could take the bullets, one, two, three like a boar. Now his thick flank heaves and he coughs a bloody foam, but Simmons cannot bring himself to put the gun to the dog’s head.

It was like that with Sarah. The cancer was a bullet fired from the gun of God, and she’d curl up like this too, she’d writhe in the grip of it, with her hands stretched out for mercy or understanding. Something that just wasn’t there and would never come. Her eyes rolled back, and her lids would flutter and often she would repeat his name.

Jeroboam, Jeroboam.

He’d smooth back her hair and shush her, and she’d fall into a restless half-sleep in which the spoken word was like some salve she needed to ease her misery.

Jeroboam, Jeroboam, just send me away.

Like some nursery rhyme from the book of death they wrote together all those months she lay in a roomful of bottle-flies in the top of summer with the heat coming down like a hammer, him fanning her with a newspaper, holding a glass of water to her lips, the bottom of it to her forehead, just to cool her down. All he could do.

Clyde shivers with the palsy of the doomed soul that he is, and his legs stiffen and he bays a long, mournful howl that echoes off in the arroyo and hangs in the air with the smoke. Simmons knows that it’s close now and he watches for the final shudder that will end his long year of waiting. But for what? Miracles. Heroes. A brush with his own violent death. None of those came. He asked for strength and begged Jesus for clarity of mind on those nights when he thought about what he might do when she was gone, but there were no answers given. No angels. No signs.

He crouches under a wide open sky, a vast blue dome, and places his hand on the dog’s muscled flank. He whispers to him now. He tells him it’s going to be all right. There’s no wind and no shadow and the air ripples above the field behind the house in translucent waves that make him aware of so much more than heat and sun and light that passes through disturbed space. He remembers the ocean. He sees ripples in a pond. Eddies that swirl in creeks and streams. Things that ebb and things that flow. Transference. Passage. What fragile things are housed in flesh.

He holds the gun to his own head now and shuts his eyes. He squeezes the trigger to the point of resistance. He can hear the labored breathing of the dog and the cicadas off in the cottonwoods behind the house, click, click, click, where the only shade for miles around is cast by the leaves of those four shimmering trees. Beneath the cottonwoods the earth is cool in the mornings and the ground just below the top layer of loam is dark and compact and hard to dig through. He rose before dawn to chop out the holes with a pick while the dog watched him curiously. They were neat, box-shaped tombs dug to his armpits, and inside they were cool and damp as a root-cellar. He dug four, and it took him all day to do the job, for that’s what it was, as were the killings themselves. A job. Acts of mercy. Acts of faith. But not in God, or anything that lay beyond this earth or within. There is but one idea he can turn to when things go bad and luck runs out. Himself. No one can save you. No one can save anybody. He puts the gun down.

And what did he ever have but that? Before them and after? He, and no other. Sarah came and Sarah left, and between those poles was a man reborn. Sarah showed him how to change a diaper. She showed him how to protect a baby’s head. Sarah sent him back to finish school and got him off the booze. Sarah. She nursed him after the crash, she saved him, and she gave him those little lives that became his own and he bought into the lie. He believed he could grow up again, the right way, by seeing through the eyes of a well-loved child to the world as it should be seen – wondrous, benevolent, kind. He learned how to live that way. But Sarah comes and Sarah goes. And then it’s gone.

He looks down at Clyde and the dog looks back at him. He cranes his head up and back, and there’s a moment of clarity in which the two are once again on familiar ground. Man and dog. Dog and man. Words are often wholly insufficient between them. Clyde can read him in an instant. The look on his face, the movements of his eyes, the slightest changes to his cheek muscles and mouth. A dog knows a man better than a man knows himself and Clyde is now putting the question to him as clear as can be, Simmons can feel it in that place where words can’t go. For the first time ever, the dog stares him down.

You know I had to, Simmons says. You know.

It was true. Clyde smelled the sickness long before the doc ever did and on the day before Sarah died he wouldn’t take his food. He vanished all during the time Simmons was with the children. He was gone all that day and when he came back in the evening he knew it was done and he would not go near their rooms. He would not go up the stairs. The dog knew, but in the end he did not fully understand, and he looks to Simmons now for courage enough to trust him this one last time.

Easy boy, Simmons said. That’s it. Just go to sleep.

He said what he had to say to keep hope alive. He told them shades of truth. He spoke in vagaries and platitudes and, since they were children, they could not read the falseness of his words and so accepted what came from his mouth as law. Just like the dog. He trained them well for that. All their lives the small deceptions. Tooth fairies and Santa Claus. Bunnies that bring eggs. Dog-heaven. Goldfish resurrected in oceans far away, wishing stars, dandelion spores, chicken bones and clovers. He made them smile with animal noises and funny voices and pulled out their splinters when they were distracted by laughter and thus taught them betrayal, but the kind meant to help, not to harm. They knew he did what he had to do to make them feel better later, at some other time, when the pain and the danger would only be worse. Little white lies.

Momma’s just sick is all. She’s gonna get better soon.

The first one comes so easy. The second is easier still. Sins don’t have one damn thing to do with God, sins are what you do to yourself but you don’t understand that until it’s too late to change. How he went from lying to killing is one thing he hoped he’d never understand but that’s where it all began because every lie is the seed of a sin.

The dog shudders and stiffens and then he goes limp. His eyes lose that sparkle of grace that’s in all things living, but the sun is still high above them and Simmons sees that star in the black space where the dog’s life begins to fade. Some light remains. It was that way with Sarah and with little Delia too but Annie, she closed hers like he asked her to. She always did what she was told. He looked her straight in the eyes and taught her to do the same, so folks would feel you deep inside, like a memory they could  never forget.

Clyde trembles. His fine orange coat is matted with mud. He paws at the earth, the air. His big, thick paws. No longer will he hear that tick, tick, tick as the dog patrols the wooden floors at night. No longer will there be floors. No longer will there be home – the tall white farmhouse they had their eyes on long before they were married. A hundred years old and showing it. Stark. White. Alone beneath a stand of golden cottonwoods on that wide open plain, empty but for memories and bright as a tooth it rises at the conflux of the alluvial mouth of some dead river unnamed. The home she made for them. The life. He kept it going as long as he could but when that truck drifted over the double-yellow that morning his luck gave out. That sonofabitch was the ruin of them all. Garret, he was the real killer. He was the one.

He should have seen it coming, the end of the run, not the truck. The beet-red, jacked-up Ford with a hot chrome grill and headlights big as plates. The sun was flaring off the windshield so that all that he saw was white where the face of the driver should have been until it was full head-on and in their lane, and then he saw the fella in a shirt of black-watch plaid and a dark moustache with a look on his face like a boy on a bicycle gone awry. It was Garret. Unlicensed and drunk. He was killed on impact, as was Bill Pope, who never wore his seat-belt out of pride. And that was that. The black cloud of misfortune fell upon him once again. His partner was dead. His best friend. He learned to walk again but he could work the farm no more. And then it hit Sarah, the biological equivalent of a head-on crash with a truck.

He looks down at Clyde and sees that he is dead. He looks up at the sky. No clouds. No wind. Alone again in the hot Texas dust. Simmons sees the shimmer of the earth at the horizon, the low hills flipped upside-down and the sky inverted. He sees the curvature of the plain and the wild undulations where that sun-baked dream meets the low rung of Heaven. Behind the house, beneath the cottonwoods, he hears the rustling of all those golden leaves that shine when the wind blows, and lift, and turn, and catch the sun and glitter like tinsel. He buried them neatly at the foot of the trees where the ground is oddly colored on the mounds. Light comes through the little gold triangles like pixie dust and fireflies. He stands. He looks down at the finest Mastiff he’s ever seen. Through dusk and dust, Simmons wanders in a fugue.

The old porch and the screen door make their customary noises and the carpet gives beneath him in the hall. Every step on the staircase, a galleon of memories. He lies on their beds for a time. He closes his eyes on his own. The white goose down, the quilt, where the little ones were formed and breached and where Sarah herself slipped off into a nowhere known. He smells the warm, sweet gasoline that spills over the floor and the walls and the chairs and his hands. Gasoline. The smell of  a promise, a whisper from a thousand golden dreams.  Evinrudes and motor boats, lawn mowers and mini-bikes, Esso stations, and Sunoco cans and big yellow Shells that slowly spin in hot summers with fumes that rise and blur, the swirly rainbow of hot gases in hot air, hands that are black and swollen and cut, his father’s hands, chainsaws and deadfalls and storms, diesel fumes and trucks, and truckers, men who wave at boys dozing in the backs of station wagons on unbearably long road journeys, where fuel pumps clack and click and ding and buzz beyond the Oil dereks, the cast iron insects, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, and miles to go of heat and sleepy visions, watching the headlights streak across the ceiling of the Country Squire and the smell of Marlboros and the muffler and the smoke, and the hot, dry wood of wishes and dreams.

Simmons smells the smoke and hears the fire from his feather-bed. He hears the children laughing. He hears little Annie singing a song to the rhythm of the tap, tap, tap of Clyde’s paws on the floor. The dog would not die. The image of the dog stays with him all through the burning and beyond.

And in the flames he sees eyes. There’s grandma Bertran and old Alice and that man in the I.C.U. with the tubes in his arms. There’s Ditto and Ray dying there in the mud on Black Virgin Mountain so long ago in Vietnam. There’s Samson, the sire of Clyde, dead beneath the tires of a car. And there’s Sarah, and Delia and Annie and Clyde. There are the eyes again, doing what they do. The eyes of the almost-dead look to the sky and search among the stars for answer, for access, in that sunset moment when all things that see with eyes, can see at last – the end.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vincent’s debut novel, Serpent Box, chronicles the life of a deformed boy, born inside the hollow of an old lynching tree, his quest for God, meaning and the secret mysteries of faith. More at www.serpentbox.com