Left-handed Luck

by Rod Michalchuk

  *

  GARY’S CAR WAS OFF LIMITS. Even if I managed to figure a way past the crowd, even if I somehow drove it away, the authorities would be searching for it—guaranteed. It was linked to the accident and some helpful citizen would’ve undoubtedly already volunteered the plate number.

  I needed another way out and didn’t have a lot of options. I could limp all the way back on a damaged knee, or hitch a ride with people who’d undoubtedly remember me and tell the police, or I could steal a car. It’s humbling: the things desperation makes you do. I lurched down the dotted line, looking for keys in ignitions.

  A Corolla pulled up with a middle-aged couple inside. The woman got out, stood in the lee of her open door and surveyed the scene. She dipped her head back inside and shouted over the wind, “It’s an accident—a bad one. I’m going to look.”

  The guy shouted back, “Okay!” and she left, hotfooting it off to where the action was.

  He fidgeted in the car for maybe thirty seconds before he climbed out, slammed his door and followed in her wake, winding his way up through the cars to go see the show, leaving the engine running, headlights on and doors unlocked.

  I pulled Gary’s keys out of my pocket and let them fall to the ground—it was a rough exchange of sorts. I hoped they’d find them and puzzle them out as belonging to the abandoned vintage Thunderbird, and that they’d claim it, driving it home and selling it to some black-market collector for way too much money.

  I climbed inside the couple’s car and shut the door on the buffeting wind. Suddenly, it was quiet. I explored around and it was a standard. An automatic would’ve been better—my knee was torture. As it was, I’d have to suffer some.

  I pressed the clutch, found reverse, and backed out. Giving it gas was a grinding ache, no worse—not as bad as I expected. I braked, shifted into first and turned off the road, driving down through the dip of the median and up onto the other side—ba-boomp—over the lip of the Vegas-bound lanes. I accelerated up through the gears and drove away. The distance built and, for the first time since the casino, I felt safe enough to breathe.

  The dashboard was lit and there was a radio. I hit the on-button and filled the little car with rocking blues—something down-home and dirty, with a serious backbeat, about being a lucky, lucky man. It made me laugh. The stereo was good and the moment was perfect. Las Vegas glowed on the horizon, spilling light up into the night sky.

  I was home free.

  The music lulled me and I remembered cigarettes, and that I wanted one. I extricated her package, thumbed open the lid and it was like gift-wrapping inside. Her ivory-skinned, cork-tipped little masterpieces were nestled in gold foil. I inhaled a whiff and they smelled intensely aromatic, with a hint of something exotic: Orthodox Church incense and the whole bazaar, sizzling under the desert sun.

  I put one between my lips, repocketed the pack and limboed, fishing out the Zippo. I snapped it open, thumbed the wheel and struck sparks. The flame hopped up and down, an inch from the tobacco end.

  I had a sudden flash—a clear-as-day picture in my head—of something inside the cigarette, crowded against the end wall of the filter tip, less than a millimeter from my lips. It was an undead thing: a wraith and a parasitic worm, both—an eyeless ghost-lamprey with a hook-lined sphincter for a mouth. It was ready to pounce, hair-trigger primed, waiting for the slightest flicker of flame to spark it into monstrous animation.

  The music continued, guitars sliding, chorus ooing, and I made to take the cigarette out of my mouth. I had time to form the intention but nothing more. It leapt—clawing my face—grappling on. I tried to slap it off, shouting—a single, inarticulate bark—a bad mistake. It slithered into my open mouth and latched onto the back of my throat, driving its teeth in—coring into the bone.

  The car was out of control—unpiloted, slowing, heading for the ditch. I was too busy thrashing to care. Hands scrabbling, feet kicking, flailing, I tried to get it off me. The car ba-boomped off the shoulder and shimmied down the embankment. The tires dug in and it tipped, going up on two wheels—up and up—a degree or less from rolling.

  We hung in space for a second and slammed down, back on all fours, and the wraith-thing’s reek—moldy and long dead—filled my sinuses. I retched—mouth packed with squirming filth. I jammed my fingers in, grabbing, but there was nothing to get a grip on. It was more smoke than anything tangible. It wriggled, locked on and rasping at the back of my throat. I tried to pinch its head, crush it between thumb and index, but it just slipped, and kept slipping.

  There was a crunch and the thing was through. It levered itself in through the hole and flowed into the backmost chambers of my skull. Further and further, it burrowed into the meat. The last of it—its tail—flagellated the back of my tongue, but by then I couldn’t even gag. It was already curled up around my brain stem, assuming control.

  The car scraped through vegetation, slowed to an almost-stop and lurched, stalling. The engine and oil lights came on—glowing shapes in the dash. My eyes stared in their general direction. I was a passenger inside my own head.

  The engine ticked, cooling, and the stereo kept playing, moaning on about luck. In shutdown, my body panted and sweated, and the thing performed its first trial—experimenting with my nervous system. It twitched me, flopping my torso forward, chicken-dancing my elbows up in the air.

  I watched it happen from a detached place and made the supreme effort, warring to regain control. Brute force: I overrode its impulses, reaching my hand over, my own muscles fighting against me, aiming to open the door. It was a titanic struggle. I got my fingers behind the door latch and popped it. It whipped open on a gust of wind and I threw myself out, face first, into the dirt.

  My glasses dug in like little shovels and it and I flopped around, fighting for motor control. From the outside, it must’ve looked like an epileptic seizure. I battled, wrestling, while the radio played on—another song: a woman lamenting her no-account man.

  It was hideously quick and strong, and ungodly clever. It attacked my left eye, forcing it out of sync, crossing it in towards my nose. I fought to bring it back online, solidifying control, and when I’d won, and it was established, I realized that it had done an end run around me. My hands were numb up to the wrists—strangers at the ends of my own arms. They went next—distant and tingly up to the shoulders—and my own hands lifted, spastic, unfamiliar with the machinery, grabbing me by the throat. My thumbs pressed into my Adam’s apple, my grip tightened and I strangled me.

  I writhed in the dirt, unable to breathe, the blood to my brain cutting off, ears ringing, vision going red. Blackness bloomed. I skirted the edges of unconsciousness, and then—it was over. I was walled up inside my own head, watching as my body drew one convulsive breath after another and stood to its feet, all on its own.

  It was unbalanced and jerky, but it managed. It took one wobbly step and another, about-facing, plunking my ass into the driver’s seat. It swung my legs in and slammed the door, stilling the air, and the stereo played the same song, finishing up now, the last few notes.

  One foot pressed the clutch, all the way down; the other the gas, just a bit. It knew what it was doing. My hand turned the key, off and then on again. The radio went silent and the starter chuffed. The motor caught. Disconnected, I sat behind my eyes, inside my own head, and watched it happen, all lines of communication down. My foot pressed the accelerator, revving the engine, and the radio came back on, belting out the station jingle, “Jackpot ray-dee-oh!” in four-part harmony.

  My hand dropped down, worked the gearshift, found reverse, and the DJ came on, braying blather. My foot released the clutch and we lurched into motion—backing uphill, in a wide arc, and then down again, facing uphill. My foot braked, moved over and worked the clutch. My hand shifted into first, and then we were heading straight up, engine wailing. We hit the lip of the pavement square-on, bouncing up and over, skipping across both lanes. A collision would’ve been nice right about then, but no such lu
ck. There was no other traffic—not one car as far as the eye could see. Music played and we barreled down the other side, through the median and up onto the eastbound lanes.

  Muscles spasming, wrestling against total lockdown, I made the supreme effort and veered the car less than a degree. Almost before I could form the intention, it had me countered. Every attempt was blocked. My most strenuous efforts did nothing more than uncoordinate it a little. It accelerated up to the speed limit and drove, in the right lane, heading back, inexorably, in the direction of the tattooed woman and whatever awful thing she had in store for me.

  The lights of the accident got nearer and brighter and I yanked and jerked and twitched, fighting like a dog over a chew toy, till it was altogether too late. We were there. The car braked to a stop, pulling up behind taillights—a long line stretching ruby-red into the distance.

  I tried to yell and attract some rescue, but nothing came out. It sounded like near inaudible gagging, way in the back my throat. The thing had me clenched tight and faced forward, hands white-knuckled to the wheel.

  She appeared, head down, storming out of the flying dust, heading up the passenger side. My torso tipped over and my hand worked the handle, opening the door, letting the wind in. It was just as loud as the music. She shouted through the gap over the noise: “You caused me a lot of trouble, buddy-boy, and nobody does that—not without payback.”

  She climbed in, hit the off button on the radio and slammed the door shut. Silence. She gestured, indicating the car, radiating hate. “Look at this piece of shit—you lost me my ride. And you fucking shot me.” She showed me the stump. It was already halfway healed, skin closed over and shiny, magenta red. “Do you have any idea how long it’s going to take to grow this back?”

  She grimaced, showing teeth. “There’s one good thing, though. I don’t have to look very far to find my next apprentice.” She pinched my cheek—hard—jerking the skin back and forth. “You’re right. Fucking. Here. And here’s the drill.” She settled back. “The first thing you’re going to do, after you’re mine-all-mine, is bite your own finger off—an eye for and eye; a slave for a slave. That seems fair to me.”

  I made a fresh effort to flee—spasming, aiming to pop my door—but the thing in my head had me frozen solid, hands welded to the wheel. I moved less than a millimeter.

  “You’re going to like this,” she said. “In about ... mmm ... thirty seconds, your hand is going to reach into your pocket and pull out my cigarettes.” She sneered. “You’re going to take one out and put it between your lips, and then you’re going to light it with my lighter. Then another one of my little friends in going to crawl inside your head and help its sister maintain order—we’re going to have a trouble-free ride.

  It was like pushing a mountain. I did everything I could to prevent it, but my hand reached into my pocket and did what she said. The pack came out. A cigarette found its way between my lips; her lighter got pulled out and lit. The flame touched the cigarette end and a second hideous thing swarmed into my mouth. It slithered up through the tear in the back of my throat and curled itself around its sister, snuggled up to my brainstem. It felt good in a nasty way that was beyond horrible.

  My hand passed her the lit cigarette. She took it and smoked, tattoo ratcheting. I could sense it working away beneath her skin. It felt like being too close to a fully charged capacitor, crackling with poorly contained energy.

  My hand tucked the package back into my pocket and found reverse, smooth as silk, perfectly in control. The things operated my body and my body operated the car: backing out and stopping, turning into the median. We crossed through the dip onto the westbound lanes and turned right, driving away from Vegas on the wrong side of the road. We cruised past the accident, crossed the median again and continued on, heading into the hills.

  “If you liked that,” she said, “you’re going to love this. Listen: there’s slavery—like what you’re experiencing right now—and then there’s slavery.” She shoved her hair back, out of her eyes. “And for you, that’s what’s coming. It won’t just be just your body that’s out of your control; it’ll be your critical faculties as well. You get to kick back in a little corner of your own head and watch yourself solve problems for me. You get to pick up my dry-cleaning and scrub the floor—and wipe my fucking ass!” Suddenly, she was screaming, flecks of spit decorating her bottom lip. “You’ll do whatever the fuck I want! My every little whim will be your fucking command!” She snapped a drag off her cigarette and leveled a glare. “And, the first thing you get to do is bite off your own little finger—or did I mention that already?”

  She waved a hand, dismissing me. “I’m tired of you.” My head turned itself away and my body drove, eyes forward, hands on the wheel in the ten-to-two position. She turned the radio on and tuned in some eighties pop, busying herself with the controls. The sound went from all the way back to somewhere in between. She adjusted the balance, bass, treble and volume, getting it just right. She settled back and one song followed another, and the landscape changed. First there were rocks and then hills. Then there were walls of rock and a tunnel—bars of fluorescent light whipped overhead. The radio shifted in and out of phase, fritzing and spopping for a while, till it lost the signal. She hit the off button and slouched back in her seat, slanting her head sideways, studying me.

  “Do you want to know what it was like for Gary?” I was locked inside my own head, unable to frame a response. “Of course you do.” She laughed and pressed a finger to my forehead. There was a flash of opalescent palace—sun and silk, fountains and stone arches—from Gary’s point of view, his home: the place in which he lived.

  “That’s how he saw it.”

  She switched fingers, using the middle one, and another picture entered my head: a filthy, verminous nest of rags and paper, dangerously close to a fuming gas heater in a cold, cinderblock ruin, stinking of exhaust and human excrement.

  “That’s how it really was.”

  She switched fingers and the picture in my head changed back to the glittering palace. “Better?” she asked, giving me a second to consider it. “Or worse?” She flipped back to the sty.

  “Gary liked it, and you know what? You’re all the same. You’ll like it too.”

  The road twisted up the left-hand shoulder of a dry river bottom. We climbed and the pavement ran out—the car dropped onto gravel, shushing, trailing dust.

  She gazed out the window as if I wasn’t there and my body drove, eyes on the road ahead. In the far periphery of my vision, I saw her shift position and, of their own accord, my hands did their thing—they took her cigarettes out, put one in my mouth and lit it. A third parasite scuttled into my head and my hand passed her the cigarette, glowing red and trailing smoke.

  Up ahead, to the left, there was a turnoff—a dirt track winding up an arroyo. My body eased off the accelerator and touched the brakes, slowing the car. It downshifted, turning in, steering between curved walls.

  It was a narrow gully, bone dry—nothing but rocks and spiny things too tough to kill—and we drove for miles, steadily uphill, following a serpentine gully, eroded out of the living earth by eons of runoff. The walls got close and closer, but the parasites steered the car with consummate skill, never once scraping the bottom or touching a side.

  The front wheels climbed over a lip and, abruptly, the track’s pitch leveled out. The walls fell away and the car rolled into a circular arena—a cup-canyon, mid-flow in the waterless streambed, maybe a hundred yards in diameter. There was an island in the exact center—a knob of rock with a huge, gnarled, impossibly ancient Bristlecone Pine growing out of it.

  We rolled to a stop in a barren spot, worn smooth by ancient water, and my hand reached out and turned the key, killing the engine. The headlights shone on the mound of tumbled stone and the wind streamed overhead, keening and moaning, jostling the car. From somewhere far, far away, there were the muffled drums of distant thunder.

  The tattooed woman got out
without a word, slamming the door and wandering off, disappearing into the dark. After a time, she came back with an armload of sticks, dumping them in the place where the headlights crossed, ten yards from the front bumper, midway between car and island. She turned and, without a backward glance, went away again. All I could do was watch.

  She brought another armful of wood and another load of smaller stuff she could use as tinder, and knelt, building a teepee out of the bigger chunks and filling the enclosed space with extra-burnable flinders of mummy-dry wood.

  When she was done, she sauntered back to the car, and, as she walked up, my hand rolled the window down and fished out her Zippo. It held it out to her, on my outstretched palm, as she arrived. She took it and went back to her pile of wood—I could’ve been furniture for all the attention she paid me.

  She sparked it alight and touched fire to the desiccated shreds. Flames leapt. The wind kicked them around and, in a matter of seconds, there was a respectable blaze. She fed it a few more chunks and came back with the lighter, dropping it into my waiting hand. My hand returned it to my pocket.

  “I’m going to call some colleagues of mine.” She patted my cheek—once, twice—hard—more like slapping. “Sit tight,” she said. “They’ll fix you right up.” She reached up and yanked out a stinging bouquet of head hair. It hurt like fire and if I could’ve, I would’ve yelled, but I was all locked up inside. The noise I made was pathetically small.

  She carried my hair sample back to the fire, pinched between her fingers, and sat, cross-legged, on the far side, eyes glittering over the flames. My hand cranked the window shut, closing me inside.

  She raised her free hand, thumb and index forming a ring, and touched it to her bottom lip, whistling, blowing a buzzing tweet—a birdcall. She whistled again and it echoed off the walls, harmonics layering, sounding like more than just one. Once more she called and the echoes multiplied—hundreds, coming from all around.

  It got darker. The headlights went dim and I knew it wasn’t the battery. I tried again to run away, to move—anything at all—but all lines of communication were down. No response.

  Something was overhead, beyond big and pressing down, squashing the atmosphere. It felt like the bottom of the deep end. Birdcalls came from all around and one single drop of water, the size of a hen’s egg, spacked against the windshield, in the center spot, right before my eyes. Another one panged off the hood.

  The birds kept calling and the weight increased. It pressed against the car and the side panels squealed, faintly, like Styrofoam. It got hard to breathe and—crack—the windshield split, the sound flat and toneless. Metal whimpered and more big drops fell—a random scattering—drumming the roof, spattering the windshield. There was a lavender flash right overhead—lightning—and a huge, sudden, earsplitting crash of thunder, loud enough to rattle the car.

  She got to her feet, studied the sky then leveled her gaze, glaring at me, accusatory, as if somehow the lightning had something to do with me, as if it were my fault. The birds got louder—closer—and the passenger-side headlight imploded with a cough and a tinkle of glass. It got even darker, way more than the loss of one headlight would dictate.

  The pressure grew worse. My ears throbbed. She whistled again and her call was answered—not echoes, but a live philharmonic choir. Birds everywhere, except it wasn’t. These weren’t birds. It was something else—the same something that was overhead, crushing the car.

  I fought to fill my lungs and tasted it—my nose was bleeding, leaking into my open mouth. A rivet popped like a gunshot in the door next to me, rattling around inside, falling down. Metal warped, distorting, squealing under the pressure.

  Everywhere—claustrophobically closer and much, much louder—the birdcalls continued. She stretched her hand out over the fire, a moment from dropping my hair into the flame, and something happened—a genuine, ass-saving miracle.

  There was a sound like a huge wind rushing, with rocks rolling and trees snapping, and then it was upon us—a flash flood.

  A wall of water spewed out of the gorge, ten feet high. It washed around the island in less time than it takes to tell, engulfing her and her fire—extinguishing it. There was a smothered flicker of violet light and the ‘spop!’ of a serious fastball hitting a catcher’s mitt, then the water swept her away—filling the little canyon chin-deep. Dirty water mounded up and over the windows on the passenger side, lifting the car. Floating, it spun, slipping sideways, and the water kept pushing, grinding gravel beneath its wheels until the flow subsided, leaving the car teetering on the brink of the downstream exit.

  The birds shrilled—a stadium full of referees calling a penalty. I was still locked up—eyes front—unable to see, but from above, only a few yards overhead, a woman was screaming obscenities: furious. It was her, the tattooed woman, rising into the air, shrieking higher and sharper, in pain now, the sound coming from further and further away. The starlings screamed in triumph and followed, gaining altitude, growing distant, carrying her away.

  The things in my head went offline. They went limp and fell, sliding into the back of my throat. It was beyond vile, but I was in control of my own body again. I gagged and coughed—bringing up bile and spewing them out: one full parasite and most of another. Its tail hung out of my nose. I pinched it, got a grip, and pulled out the remainder. It slimed fast to my fingers and boiled away into greasy smoke. I wiped the residue off on my pant leg. The other one was already gone—nothing left but a shit-like stain on the front of my jacket.

  I gagged again—heaving this time—and brought the last one up, puking it up onto the floor between my feet. It lay in a fetal curl, in a puddle of vomit, sizzling away to nothing.

  They were all gone—the parasites and the tattooed woman, both.

  Her cigarettes were still in my breast pocket. I rolled the window down, extracted the package as if it contained extra-fragile vials of Ebola virus and flung it out into the dark.

  I considered tossing her Zippo as well, but kept it instead. It was too cool to throw away. I rolled the window back up and sincerely hoped that she was dead. If she wasn’t, wherever she was, I hoped she was suffering—paying full retail for every crime she’d ever committed.

  I turned the ignition key. The starter churned and nothing happened. I chewed my lip and tried again, giving it a little gas. It chuffed and wheezed, and just as the battery was about to give up the ghost, it caught—exhaust blatting, engine rough and sputtering. I babied it, feeding it sips of gas until it leveled out, and when it looked as if it was going to go on its own, I let out the breath I’d been holding and shifted into gear. The transmission lunked and engaged, grinding, and then I was moving, riding the wheels over the lip of the opening and weaving downhill, following the water, my path lit by a single headlight.

  Big surprise—the road back was completely different than the road there. Miles and miles had seemingly just disappeared. It took less than twenty minutes to reach the bottom of the arroyo and, when I was there, I found myself on the side of the highway, less than a mile from the still-lit scene of the accident.

  I pulled up onto the shoulder. A few cars whooshed past and I accelerated up to speed, the car rattling and shimmying, steering seriously misaligned, joining the flow of traffic. I settled into the outside lane and headed towards the big light on the horizon and the dubious comforts of my little home on wheels.

  *

  MY TOOTH ACTUALLY re-rooted itself. I shoved it back into its hole in the bathroom of an Exxon station half a block from where I ditched the Toyota. It was a horrible affair but it came back, healing up every bit as good as before. I have no idea if this is miraculous or not, and quite frankly, I couldn’t care less. It doesn’t hurt anymore.

  My knee, however, still does. It’s never stopped. Most times, it’s manageable if I sit still but, other times, when I move it just so, it gives me a jolt of pure agony. I’ve learned how to avoid that but, occasionally, it still happens.

  There’s no d
enying I survived only by sheer happenstance, but the last thing in the world I feel like is lucky. If cause and effect conspired to save me, it also ruined my life, such as it was, because this is not over—not by a long shot. The tattooed woman is still out there somewhere and somehow she knows exactly where I am—my precise location—at all times.

  I clued in about eight days ago at The Coffee Cup Inn in Questa, New Mexico. I was just finishing my grits when the phone behind the counter started ringing. The server answered—a fat girl with pigtails—saying, “Hi. Coffee Cup.” She listened, said “Hello?” and then said it again, sounding annoyed. She hung up and an instant later, almost before the receiver hit the cradle, it rang again. She answered again, and the same thing happened—another call with nobody there.

  I paid my bill and, the whole time, the phone kept ringing. The server answered again and again, furious, slamming the receiver. I went outside and the payphone at the entrance started ringing just as I walked by.

  Now, virtually everywhere I go, all I have to do is stop for less than an hour and the nearest phone starts up. I can’t stay in a hotel or campground, or have a sit-down meal in a restaurant—not any more.

  I guess, like it or not, one of these days I’m going to have to answer.

  THE END

  If you enjoyed Left-handed Luck, leave comment, please, and spread the word. Tell two friends, and, if you’re so inclined, keep an eye out for Ten Tenths of the Law. If it’s not out already, it will be soon.

  Thanks,

  ®