by Robert Bloch
“No, I mean really look at them. You haven’t seen everything there is to see.”
I looked at him instead. Real hard. I could hardly believe he was saying this. “Why? I’m sorry they’re dead. But why do I have to look a them?”
“Because I want you to.”
“Jesse. . .”
“. . .And besides, you should know about these things. Your mom and dad don’t want you to know about things like this, but I guess it’s about the most important thing to know about there is. Everybody gets scared of dying, and just about everybody is scared of the dead. You remember that movie Zombie we rented? That’s what it was all about. Now we’ve got two dead bodies here. You’re my friend, and I want to help you out. I want to share something with you.”
“Christ, Jesse. They’re your parents.”
“What, you think I don’t know that? Who else should I learn about this stuff from anyway? If they were still alive, they’d be supposed to teach me. What’s wrong with it? And don’t just tell me because it’s ‘weird.’ People say something’s weird because it makes them nervous. Just because it bothers them they don’t want you to do it. So what do we care, anyway? Nobody else is gonna know about this.”
Jesse could argue better than anybody, and I never knew what to think about anything for sure. Before I knew it he had me back in the bedroom, leaning over the bodies. It was a little better—I guess I was getting used to them. At least I didn’t feel ready to throw up like I did a while ago. That surprised me. It surprised me even more when he took my hand and put it on his mom’s—his dead mom’s—arm, and I didn’t jerk it away.
“Jesse. . .” I guess I’d expected it to be still stiff, but it had gotten soft again, as soft as anything I’d ever felt, like I could just dig my fingers into her arm like butter. It was cool, but not what I expected. And dry.
“See the spots?” Jesse said behind me. “Like somebody’s been painting her. Like for one of those freak shows. Oh, she’d hate it if she knew. She’d think she looked like a whore!”
I saw them all right. Patches of blue-green low down on his dad’s belly. Before I could stop him he raised his mom’s skirt and showed me that the marks on her were worse: more of the blue-green and little patches of greenish-red, all of it swimming together around her big white panties. I was embarrassed, but I kept staring. That’s the way I’d always imagined seeing my first panties on a woman: when she was asleep or—to tell the truth—when she was dead. I used to dream about dead women in their panties and bras, dead women naked with their parts hanging out, and I’d felt ashamed about it, but here it was happening for real and for some reason I was having a hard time feeling too ashamed. I hadn’t done it; I hadn’t killed her.
“Look,” he said. I followed his hand as it moved up his mother’s belly. I tensed as he pulled her dress up further, back over her head so that I couldn’t see her mouth anymore, her mouth hanging open like she was screaming, but no sound coming out. “I know you always wanted to see one of these up close. Admit it, John.” His hand rested on the right cup of her bra. Now I felt real bad, and ashamed, like I had helped him kill her. Her white, loose skin spilled out of the top and bottom of the cup like big gobs of dough. With a jerk of his hand Jesse pulled his mother’s bra off. The skin was loose and it all had swollen so much it was beginning to tear. I knew it was going to break like an old fruit any second. “She’s gotten bigger since the thing happened,” he said. I started to choke. “Come on, John. You always wanted to see this stuff. You wanted to see it, and you wanted to see it dead.”
I turned away and walked back into the hall when he started to laugh. His mom was an it now. His dad was a thing. But Jesse knew me so well. He knew about the dreams and he knew what would get to me, what I always thought about, even though I’d never told him. It made me wonder if all guys my age think about being dead that way, wanting to see it and touch it, wanting something real like that, even though it was so awful. I used to dream about finding my own parents dead, and what they would look like, but never once did I imagine I would do that to them. Not like Jesse. I knew now what Jesse had done to his parents. No question about that anymore. But I was all mixed up about what I felt about it. Because, even though it was awful, I still wanted to look, and touch. Wasn’t that almost as bad?
“Here.” Jesse grabbed my arm and turned me around. He led me back over to his mother’s body. “You don’t have to look. You can close your eyes. Let me just take your hand.” But I wanted to look. He took me over to her side. There was a big blister there, full of stuff. Jesse put my hand on it. “Feels weird, huh?” He didn’t look crazy; he looked like some kind of young scientist or something from some dumb TV show. I nodded. “Hey, look at her mouth!” I did. In her big loose mouth I could see pieces of food that had come up. A little dark bug crawled up out of her hair. This is what it’s like, what it’s really like, I thought. I thought about those rock stars I used to like all made up like they were dead, those horror movies I used to watch with Jesse, and all those stoner kids I used to know getting high every chance they had and telling me it don’t matter anyway and everything was just a drag with their eyes half shut and their mouths hanging open and their skin getting whiter every day. All of them, they don’t know shit about it, I thought. This is what it’s really like.
Jesse left me by his mom and started going to the candles one at a time, snuffing them out. A filmy gray smoke started to fill the bedroom. I could already smell the mix of sweet and sharp smells starting to go away, and underneath that the other truly awful smell creeping in.
Jesse turned to me while the last few candles were still lit. That bad smell was almost all over me now, but I just sat there, holding my breath and waiting for it. He almost grinned but didn’t quite make it. “I guess you’re ready to take a hit off all this now,” he said. I just stared at him. And then I let my clean breath go.
And now Jesse says he figures it’s about time we did another one.
We took off from his house with the one bike and Jesse’s pack but we had to walk most of the time because Jesse figured we’d better go cross-country, over the fences and through the trees where nobody could see us. He didn’t think they’d find the bodies anytime soon but my parents would report me missing after a while. It was hell getting the bike through all that stuff but Jesse said we might need it later so we best take it. The scariest part was when we had to cross a couple of creeks and wading through water up over my belt carrying that bike made me sure I was going to drown. But I thought maybe I even deserved it for what I’d seen, what I’d done, and what I didn’t do. I thought about what a body must look like after it drowned—I’d heard they swole up something awful, and I thought about Jesse showing off my body after I’d died, letting people poke it and smell it, and then I didn’t want to die anymore.
Once Jesse suggested that maybe we should build a raft and float downriver like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I’d read the two books and he’d seen one of the movies. I thought it was a great idea but then we couldn’t figure out how to do it. Jesse bitched about how they don’t teach you important stuff like that in school, and they used to, dads taught you stuff like raft-building but they didn’t anymore. He said his dad should have taught him stuff like that but he was always too busy.
“Probably,” I said, watching Jesse closer all the time because he seemed to be getting frustrated with everything.
I thought a lot about Tom and Huck that first day and how they came back into town just in time to see their own funeral. I wondered if every kid dreamed about doing that. I wondered, if my parents found out what I did in Jesse’s house, what they would say about me at my funeral.
We slept the first night under the trees. Or tried to. Jesse walked around a lot in the dark and I couldn’t sleep much from watching him. The next morning he was nervous and agitated and first thing he did he found an old dog and beat it over the head with a hammer. I didn’t know he had the hammer but it was in his pack and I pretty
much guessed what he’d used it for before. He didn’t even tell me he was gong to do it, he just saw the dog and as soon as he saw it he did it. We both stood there and looked at the body and touched it and kicked it and I didn’t feel a damn thing and I don’t think Jesse did, either, because he was still real nervous.
Later that morning the farmer picked us up in his truck.
“Going far?” he asked us from the window and I wanted to tell him to keep driving mister but I didn’t. He was old and had a nice face and was probably somebody’s father and some kid’s grandfather but I couldn’t say a thing with Jesse standing there.
“Meadville,” Jesse said, smiling. I’d seen that fakey smile on Jesse’s face before, when he talked to adults, when he talked to his own parents. “We’re gonna help out on my uncle’s farm.” Jesse smiled and smiled and my throat and my chest and my head started filling up with that awful smell again. The old man looked at me and all I could do was look at him and nod. He let Jesse into the cab of the truck and told me I’d better ride with my bike in the back. The old man smiled at me a real smile, like I was a good boy.
The breeze was cool in the back of the truck and the bed rocked so on the gravelly side road we were on I started falling asleep, but every time I was getting ready to conk out we’d hit a bump or something and my head would snap up. But I still think I must have slept a little because somewhere in there I started to dream. I dreamed that I was riding along in the back of a pickup truck my grandfather was driving. He’d been singing the whole way and I’d been enjoying his singing but then it wasn’t singing anymore, it was screaming and a monster was in the front seat with him, Death was in the front seat with him, beating him over the head with a hammer. Then the truck jerked to a stop and I looked through the cab window where Death was hammering the brains out of my grandfather and coating the glass with gray and brown and red. My grandfather scratched at the glass like I should do something but I couldn’t because it was just a dream. Then Death turned to me and grinned while he was still swinging the hammer ad fighting with my grandfather and it was my face grinning and speckled with brains and blood.
I turned around to try to get out of the dream, to watch the trees whizz by while the truck was rocking me to sleep, but the land was dark and the trees were tall bodies all swollen in their dying and their heavy heads hanging down and their loose mouths falling open. And the wind through the trees was the breath of the dead—that awful smell I thought we’d left back at Jesse’s house.
Later I kissed my grandfather goodbye and helped Jesse bury him under one of those tall trees that smelled so bad.
And now Jesse says he figures it’s about time we did another one. He grins and says he’s lost the smell. But I can smell it all the time—I smell, taste, and breathe that smell.
Outside Meadville Jesse washed up and stole a shirt and pants off a clothesline. From there we took turns walking and riding the bike to a mall where Jesse did some panhandling. We used the money to buy shakes and burgers. While we were eating Jesse said that panhandling wasn’t wrong if you had to do it to get something to eat. I couldn’t watch Jesse eat—the food kept coming up out of his mouth. My two burgers smelled so bad I tried to hold my breath while I ate them but that made me choke. But I still ate them. I was hungry.
We walked around the mall for a long time. Other people did the same thing, staring, but never buying anything. It reminded me of one of those zombie pictures. I tried not to touch anybody because they smelled so bad and they held their mouths open so that you could see all their teeth.
Finally Jesse picked out two girls and dragged me over to them. I couldn’t get too close because of their smell, but the younger one seemed to like me. She had a nice smile. I looked at Jesse’s face. He was grinning at them and then at me. His complexion had gotten real bad since we’d started traveling—there’d been more and more zits on his face every day. Now they were huge. One burst open and a long skinny white worm crawled out. I looked at the girls—they didn’t seem to notice.
“His parents are putting him up for adoption so we ran away. I’m trying to hide him until they change their minds.” Jesse’s breath stank.
The girls looked at me. “Really?” the older one said. Her face had tiny cracks in it. I looked down at my feet.
Both of the girls said “I’m sorry” about the same time, then they got quiet like they were embarrassed. But I still didn’t look up. I watched their sandaled feet and the black bugs crawling between their toes.
The older one could drive so they hid us in the backseat of their car and drove to the end of the drive that led to the farmhouse where their family lived. We were supposed to go on to the barn and the girls would bring us out some food later. We never told them about my bike and I kept thinking about it and what people would say when they found it. Even though I never used the bike anymore I was a little sorry about having lost it.
I also thought about those girls and how nice they were and how the younger one seemed to like me, even though they smelled so bad. I wondered why girls like that were always so nice to guys like us, guys with a story to tell, and I thought about how dumb it was.
After we were in the barn for a couple of hours the girls—they were sisters, if I didn’t mention it before—brought us some food. The younger one talked to me a long time while I ate but I don’t remember anything she said. The older one talked to Jesse the same way and I heard her say “You’re a good person to be helping your friend like this.” She leaned over and kissed Jesse on his cheek even though the zits were tearing his face apart. Her skirt rode up on the side and Jesse put his dirty hand there. I saw the blisters rise up out of her skin and break open and the smell was worse than ever in the barn but no one else seemed to notice.
I finished eating and leaned back into the dirty straw. I liked the younger sister but I hoped she wouldn’t kiss me the same way. I couldn’t stand the idea of her open, loose mouth touching my skin. Underneath the straw I saw that there were hunks of gray flesh, pieces of arms and legs and things inside you I didn’t know the name for. But I covered them over with more straw when nobody was looking, and I didn’t say anything.
And now Jesse says he figures it’s about time we did another one. He thinks I’ve forgotten. But I haven’t.
I’ve been thinking about the two sisters all night and how much they trust us and how good they’ve been to us. And I’ve been thinking how they remind me of the Wilks sisters in Huckleberry Finn and how Huck felt so ornery and low-down because he was letting the duke and king rob them of their money after the sisters had been so nice to him. Sometimes I guess you don’t know how to behave until you’ve read it in a book or seen it on TV.
So he gets up from his nest in the sour straw and starts toward the barn door. And I get up out of the straw and follow. Only last night I took the hammer, and now I beat him in the head until his head comes apart, and all the stink comes out and covers me so bad I know I’ll never get it off. He always said he’d fight really hard if he knew he was dying, but his body doesn’t fight back hardly at all. Maybe he didn’t know.
I hear the noises in the farmhouse and now there are voices and flashlights coming. I scrape my fingers through the straw to find all the pieces of Jesse’s head to make him look a little better for these people. I lie down in the straw beside him and close my eyes, leaving just a sliver of milky white under each lid to show them. I drop my mouth open and stop my saliva. I imagine the blue-green colors that will come and paint my body. I imagine the blisters and the insects and the terrible smell my breath has become. But mostly I try to imagine how I’m going to explain to these strangers why I’m enjoying this.
Enduring Art
Robert E. Vardeman
“It’s a masterpiece. A goddamn masterpiece, isn’t it?” Marvin Arthurs looked expectantly at his girlfriend. Anita Kovel stepped back, nervously pushed a vagrant strand of dishwater-blond hair from her eyes and then licked her lips. Arthurs read her like a book. The bitch di
dn’t like it. She hated it. And it was good. It was better than good. She never liked anything he did, not anymore.
“Art, it’s. . .so strange,” she said. She licked her lips again and her sea-green eyes darted around. She was looking for some way to escape confronting his genius. Work of such magnitude frightened her, and it should, he thought. This was better than anything the other environmental artists did. Even Jean Verame’s painted stones near Amarillo couldn’t compare when he finished. The maquette would be translated from the bare rock of a mountain in ways not seen since Gutzon Borglum chiseled away at Mount Rush-more. He would make an even more notable contribution to environmental art than the current master, James Turrell and the Roden Crater!
“It’s the best work I’ve ever done.” Arthurs turned from the chubby woman and smiled. It was good. Damned good.
“It’s a piece of shit, Art,” Anita said in a quavering voice.
“And it’s messed up the entire apartment. This place looks more like a pigpen than ever before.”
It took him a second to shift from his appreciation of the six-hundred-pound welded iron bar and concrete maquette of a fornicating Cerberus to his surroundings. The welding torch had singed a few of the frilly things Anita had scattered around, and the cement he had used so freely lay like a gray shroud on the furniture. It hardly mattered what he had done to the wood floor. The place was rented. What did she want from him? He had to create. The maquette was his blueprint for the finished piece, an entire mountain carved into the dog’s likeness.
“What—” he began.
“Art, I can’t go on like this. You rob garbage cans and landfills and hang it all together and call it a. . .masterpiece. You live like a slob. And you haven’t paid your share of the rent in six months.”
“You’ve got a grant.”
“It’s hardly enough for me to live on. I can’t keep supporting both of us, Art. I can’t!” Anita’s voice rose an octave and grated shrilly on Arthurs’ ears. He wanted to flip down his welder’s mask, turn on the torch and cut out her vocal cords.