by Shaun Meeks
“You don’t even sound like you want to stay.”
“Of course I do. Earth has become more of a home to me than my birth planet ever was. I was barely thirty when I left there, when everyone I knew and loved was killed. This is my real home, and I’m surrounded by people who actually care about me. I do something I enjoy, and I do it well. But sure, take it all away. Or even threaten to. It’ll ruin my life, but it will also open the floodgates to this planet, and you know it. Whoever this underground uprising is, they’ll see you removing me as weakness, so do whatever you’re going to do. Write your report; go tattle on me. Let the Collective know I’m such a turd and in need of a time out. Then we can watch this world go down the crapper.”
“You really do have an ego, don’t you?” Parks said, looking disgusted with me, but I was already done with all of it. I was stressed out, worn out, and willing to punch him out. “I will write my report, but I have an easy way to redeem yourself so the Collective will see you want to change.”
“And what’s that?”
“You end it with the human, the one you’re in a relationship with. You cut off all ties to her and I can guarantee you that the Collective will let everything else slide. It’s the major issue they have right now.”
I sat there in stunned silence. I couldn’t think about not spending time with her any more. Trying to imagine her face as we sat somewhere and I told her we had to end things, it made me feel queasy. The two of us met because of this work I do. We got involved pretty fast, and fell for one another even faster. Some of her friends thought it’d been way too quick, as though the concept of love at first sight is new. They told her she tended to rush into relationships far too often, and despite her explanation of how different it was between us, they stuck to their guns on their opinions and suggestions she should step back and slow things down. Sure, we might’ve moved quickly, going from a date to saying we loved each other in record time, but there are no rules when it comes to the heart. There was no rule book, especially when it comes to interplanetary dating.
“How am I supposed to do that? I love her,” I said, my voice softer than I meant it to come out. Even to my own ears I sounded quiet and defeated. That was probably because I was replaying different breakup scenarios in my head and seeing her heart break over and over again.
“That’s the way it has to be if you want to stay on Earth, Dillon. You can think on it for a few days, but if it’s not done by the week’s end, I can’t guarantee you’ll be allowed to stay. You end it with her, and that’ll at least show your willingness to move forward and follow the rules. Again, think on it, but not for too long.”
I wanted to jump at him and punch him in his stupid, smug face over and over again while screaming Fuck you and your fucking rules, but I didn’t. I sat there on his couch, breathing in his stale air, looking over at the remains of the Gargar, and tried to figure out my next move. Could I break her heart and my own? Could I follow these rules I didn’t really care about? It seemed like either choice I made, losing Rouge was the end result.
Heads you win, tails I lose.
Without another word to him, I got up and left the house. He said something to me as I was going, but I didn’t hear a word of it. It was just sound: a muffled, muted voice like an adult in a Peanuts cartoon. He was nothing but background noise as I walked to my car, got in and started it. I didn’t drive off right away. I just sat there for a while, seething, and staring at the steering wheel. At some point I began to scream over and over again, long and loud until my ears hurt and lights burst in my vision. I felt dizzy and sick. I leaned back in my seat, closed my eyes and tried to wish it all away.
Nothing changed.
Once my head seemed as clear as it was going to get, I drove away from Parks’ house. I tried to call Rouge, but she didn’t answer. I sent her a text and told her I needed her to get back to me as soon as she could, but as soon as I hit send, I wanted to retract it. What was I going to tell her? I needed to vent, but didn’t want to drop this kind of bomb on her, not yet, not until I had a chance to figure out exactly what I planned to say and do. I drove with no ideas finding their way into my confused brain. I was positive I didn’t want to leave her, but it seemed as though any way I sliced it the results were going to be the same. Stay with her and I’m sent off the planet; leave her and I could still never be close to the one person I wanted to be with. Either way, we couldn’t be together.
I’d been painted into a corner.
I drove around aimless. I talked to myself as I turned from one street to the next. At some point I stopped off at a drug store and bought a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. I barely remembered doing it, but there it sat in my cup holder, half gone and my mouth tasting vaguely of peppermint, cherry chalk. My stomach rolled acidic waves and turned somersaults, so I drank more of the unpleasant, vile liquid.
I thought about calling Godfrey. At least he was someone I could lay it all out before and he might have some understanding. In the end I didn’t think it was right to unload on him, especially since it was clear they were watching him, too. And if I ended up taking option number three, the one Parks never mentioned, I didn’t want him knowing anything about it. The less Godfrey knew, the better off he was. After all, choice number three was going rogue with Rouge and running. Not the best option, seeing as it’d make me one of the hunted, but there were places to go on this planet where they’d never be able to find us. I knew about small towns and villages that hunters would rarely, if ever, venture to, and looking human meant I could at least blend in. It might be the only choice, though if I was caught it would mean a lot more than losing Rouge. It would mean losing my life. A rogue hunter was a risk, and wouldn’t just be sent off the planet. They’d be sent to whatever was beyond the mortal world.
At some point I drove all the way to the west end of the city, to Etobicoke, and noticed Sherway Gardens was just up ahead. I pulled into a shopping mall parking lot. I shut off the engine and sat there, turning it all over in my head. Time slipped from me and I started to feel dizzy and tired. I felt like a hamster on one of those wheels, going nowhere fast. Sitting there and thinking about it all wasn’t helping anything, so I decided to go walk through the mall and just blend in. I thought about grabbing some junk food from the food court and eating away the stress, even if the idea of eating made me feel a bit queasy. Maybe some salt, oil and sugar would chase the blues away, even momentarily.
For a Monday afternoon, the mall was busy. I hadn’t been to the place in years, and had never seen it full of so many people who clearly didn’t have day jobs. People with arms full of bags, or kids; packs of people talking so loud my head started to hurt even more than it already had been. I wondered if I was coming down with the flu, or if was only stress-related. If it was stress, I figured there’d be a nervous breakdown in my future if I didn’t find a way to wrangle it in. I felt like utter crap.
I made my way to the food court, and that turned out to be a mistake. Apparently, part of the reason the mall was so busy was a meet and greet right in the hub, next to the stairs which led up to the second level food court. Some teen idol who sang about his little bits needing to be with someone’s lady bits had been set to perform, sign posters, and whatnot. It appeared the whole shindig was free, so cue the slew of rabid fans.
The problem was, foam-drooling fans were young and had made the singer popular by watching all his videos on YouTube. Guess what else was on the same digital platform?
That’s right.
“OMG! It’s the monster man!”
“Monster guy! Over here!”
“He’s so cute.”
“He’s shorter than I thought.”
“You’re a fraud.”
“Loser.”
“I love you.”
“Sign my poster, monster dude.”
“Die, you turd!”
“What a dick! Get it? He’s a dick!”<
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The whole area exploded with calls and screams towards me. I backed up as the crowd surged in my direction. Young girls and boys charged at me as though I was a member of some currently popular auto-tuned pop band. A sea of braces, pimples, greasy fingers came at me like a tsunami, and I felt near-panic grip me, and the urge to get out of there was overwhelming. I think I may have screamed as I turned to run, only to come face to face with a nightmare.
Across from the surging sea of teens, a woman I didn’t know stood looking in my direction. She filled me with dread. I had no idea how old she was, but as my eyes fell on her, something changed in her face. The space around her nose and mouth became shadowy, and her eyes darkened. Her features liquefied and swirled, as though the blackness was made up of something alive. The darkness began to bleed down her face, looked as though it was melting her flesh as it went, and when she opened her mouth, globs of black, tar-like mud fell from it. I screamed as the wads of blackness fell to the ground. I looked down and saw it moving. The sludge inched towards me, alive. It looked like soil mixed with old motor oil, and was full of all sorts of tiny, disgusting bugs.
I hate bugs, but I hated whatever she was even more.
I started to back away from her, but only ended up crashing into the crowd of kids behind me. Their shouts and my screams at the melting monster before me blended to become a cacophony. I had to get away from it all.
Panic took over and I shoved and pushed everyone out of my way. Young hands tried to grab my arms and I ripped myself free from them. I’m sure I knocked a few of them flying, but that woman was still there, still spewing clumps and blobs of nightmare from her face onto the floor. Someone told me to watch out, another to relax. I told them all to fuck off and let me go.
Once I was free, I ran from them and then from the mall.
The cold air hit me hard, but it was so welcome. I bent over, trying to catch my breath and fighting back a need—a real need—to bawl my eyes out. I felt so overwhelmed, and once out and away from all of that, the panic hit me like a truck. I began to breathe in slow, deep breaths, trying to calm my speeding heart. I turned and shot a quick look over at the mall doors I’d just run from, expecting the kids, or the melting woman, to be coming after me, but was relieved to see nobody there.
“What the fuck was that?” I asked myself as a group of people passed me to go into the mall. One of them—a dad with a child of maybe four years—shot me a look and told me to watch my mouth or I wouldn’t have a mouth to ever watch again. “Yeah, sure. Sorry about that. Not sure what you mean, but sorry.”
They went in and I continued to watch. I expected others to run out of there screaming at any second. As soon as they all saw the melting woman, they’d see why I was freaking out, and they’d run for the hills. I’d made a spectacle of myself and most of them were focused on my hysterics, but after a few seconds I expected someone else would’ve notice the melting woman and join me in my exodus. There’s no way one melting woman could attack them all at once, but someone had to have the good sense to make like a library and book.
Nobody did.
I inched my way back to the doors and before going in, I put my hoodie up, hoping it was enough to disguise me for a bit as I surveyed what was going on. I wasn’t planning on going all the way in, just enough to see if I could hear screams and see people running away. I knew there was more than one entrance/exit in Sherway, so maybe everyone else had gone one of the other ways.
Inside, though, I heard nothing. Not a scream of terror, or the slap of feet as they dashed through the tiled mall. There were a lot of voices, and some yelling, but it was all in the realm of normality.
What the hell was going on?
I inched back towards the food court, and stopped in the area where everything had happened, keeping my head down so nobody would see me. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Even the spot where the melting woman had spewed her mouthy goo on the floor looked as clean as a mall could look. I was at a loss.
I turned away from the food court, my back against the Tory Burch store, and tried to get my head around what had just happened. Music started to thump off in the center and I could hear a chorus of screams from the kids as their pop sensation began to do what is these days called singing. The background noise sounded more like the electronic chirps of Star Wars’ R2D2 than anything you’d call music.
“Everything alright, chief?” a woman asked to my right, and when I turned to look at her, I almost expected it to be the melting lady. I jumped a little and nearly ran, but saw it was a security guard and her partner.
“Yeah. Sure. Everything’s fine,” I said, as convincingly as I could muster.
“Well, you’re going to have to take down your hoodie. We don’t allow that or any other gang stuff here, boss.” The two of them stood in front of me, hands on their duty belts as though they were just waiting for a reason to grab the baton, cuffs, or whatever else they thought would be fun to use on someone. The guy had a hand on his radio, holding it as though there was a gun in the holster instead of an ancient Motorola walkie-talkie.
“Seriously? I can’t wear my hoodie up because you think it’s a gang thing?”
“You heard my partner,” said the other guard. He was tall, and had no neck I could see. His hands were the size of my head and his fingers looked more like pale sausages than actual digits. “I think you’re going to just need to leave.”
Whew! That went from zero to sixty in no time.
“Okay. Sounds good to me. And if I come back, is there anything else I shouldn’t do or wear?” I asked as I pulled my hoodie down.
“Oh, you’re not coming back here, buddy,” the female told me, taking my arm. “You clearly have some attitude, and around here, we don’t put up with that kind of shit.”
I was taken a bit aback, but just went with it. They each had an arm, and began to escort me out of the mall. This wasn’t the first time I’d been physically removed from anywhere, and I doubted it would be the last, but there was something that felt a little excessive about it. From the way she kept referring to me as boss, chief and buddy, as though she knew me, to the way she was still trying to talk down to me while they escorted me out for wearing a hood up, was ridiculous.
“You know, you may want to put a sign up somewhere, letting people know these rules of yours.”
“Yeah, we’ll get on that, pal,” she said, as we approached the exit.
Before we got there, a group of about seven walked in through the doors, and my feet nearly stopped working, my legs almost gave out. A man and a woman, holding hands, walked in, and at first they were smiling. But a second later, their faces were doing the same thing as the woman’s by the food court. My stomach turned cold, and as I began to back away, the guards squeezed my arm and yanked me towards the melting monsters.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, shithead?” the female security guard barked at me. “You’re going out that door, or we’re putting you in cuffs and calling the cops.”
I looked at her, and then back at the couple with the dissolving faces. They were coming right at us, but the guards didn’t seem to care. The big guy was looking right at them, yet they were more focused on tossing me out than they were at the bug-filled sludge splattering on the mall floor.
I almost screamed, but the couple veered away when they saw us coming, as though I was the one with the face looking like the German guy from Raiders of the Lost Ark. We continued forward, but I was staring wide-eyed over my shoulder at the couple, even though they never bothered to look back at me.
“Did you two see that, or am I losing my marbles?” I asked. But already knew the answer.
“You’ll lose a lot more than your marbles if you come back here, fucktard,” she growled, and then I was back outside. “I mean it. You come back here and you’ll find out what it feels like to get hit with Matt’s canned hams.” She motioned t
o her partner, who slammed one massive hand into his equally massive palm. I got the point.
“No worries. I won’t be back. Your mall’s overrated, anyway. Stop acting like this is somewhere special. It’s Etobicoke, Toronto’s butt crack. This place nearly makes Scarborough Town Centre look upscale.”
I walked away from them and headed back to my car. They called out some insults, no doubt trying to egg me back inside so they’d have a reason to arrest me, but I had more important things to worry about than two overpaid rent-a-cops. Mainly, I needed to wrap my head around what was going on, about what I’d just seen. It was obvious I was the only one seeing the melting faces. None of the people around, or the guards, had reacted, so there was no doubting it. Why I was seeing it was what I couldn’t wrap my head around. It was clear the melted-faced monsters were the same thing Chance had been seeing, and I knew why he was so freaked out. The sight of them had turned my blood cold.
The real question was: what caused it? Why had I start seeing the same thing Chance had? What had been the cause of the visions for him? Was it stress? It could’ve been. I was stressed out quite a lot. Or maybe I brought something back with me from Niagara Falls. This could be some demon or monster, or even some alien virus I’d never heard about.
I needed to get home and try to work it all out. I had to try to figure out why I was having the same visions as my client. I wanted to know if I was going to end up with the same head-twisted-off fate he had.
Things only seemed to be getting more stressful these days.
When I got back to my apartment, I locked the door and checked my phone. Still nothing from Rouge, but maybe that was for the best. There was too much to try to work out, and I wouldn’t be very good company. Nor did I like the idea of her seeing me in that condition. With what happened at Sherway Gardens, and the bomb dropped on me by Parks, I felt as though I was coming apart at the seams, and then being pulled in four different directions at the same time. My stuffing had started to fall out; my mind was little more than mush. I felt restless, unable to stay on one train of thought for longer than a moment or two. If I sat down and tried to focus, to close my eyes and work through any of it, the images of those melted-face people crept into my mind. This led to Chance sans head, and the idea I would end up the same way. I mean, it was logical thinking that whatever made Chance see what he did, could very well be the same thing that caused him to have his head twisted off like a pop lid. If I followed that track of thinking, I could surmise the same thing was likely to happen to me.