by Mark Tufo
I was hyper-focused on that boundary. I don’t know how I knew, but I was positive that hole couldn’t pass. I once again saw Linnick peering behind us, then to my face, then forward. She wasn’t saying a word, which was unnerving in its own respect; it’s when they get completely silent—past comment that you know you're in trouble. I couldn’t tell if she was hopeful we would make it or grieved that we would fail so close to our goal. I was more than expecting at any moment to start falling backward as my foot slid out from under me and we tumbled to our painfully long deaths. We had to make it; if they got me again I was certain the fates that ran this place would make sure I could see the cliffs from where I lay—a true torturer’s device. To be caged and dying of thirst is one thing; to see a clear river running just out of your reach is quite another.
“Run, Tallboat! Please!” Linnick begged, though I’m not sure what she thought I was doing. I was flat out running as fast as I could; I wasn’t holding anything back for another day—there was no ‘other gear’. I know this is going to seem movie-cliché, but this is the way it happened, there is no need for embellishment. This will be something I add to my ever-growing list of nightmare inducing events. The timing had to be right. If all had been well with my body I would have pushed off when my left foot hit, but it was damaged and I didn’t think I could get the necessary thrust. If I waited another cycle—micro-second that it was—for my right to come down, it would be too late. I was already being sprayed with the up-swelling ground from the pursuing hole. Nope. I was going to have to take off just slightly further from where I wanted to be. I somehow found the ways and means to wrestle an ounce of strength from a leg that felt like a wet noodle.
Linnick was speaking rhythmically, not in English. Had to be some sort of prayer. The ground was solid as I launched, it gave way just as my toes lifted off. I turned to look down at the gaping wound rushing beneath me; the bottom was as black as the heart of Eliza. This time we were keeping pace with each other; if I came down early, I would never come back up. Linnick knew we were going to come up short long before I did; she left the relative safety of my pocket and headed for my shoulder. I cried out as she bit down on my earlobe. As much as that hurt, it had nothing on the crushing impact as my chest crashed into the cliff side. My arms were on the ledge, only because that was where momentum dictated they go. My legs were independently seeking purchase on the slick side, and the hole? Well, it waited below like a patient shark or crocodile that can see its prey is in trouble and knows it doesn’t have to do much more than wait with its mouth open for the meal to fall.
My feet were sliding like I was skidding on ice. The only thing keeping my upper half from tumbling over backwards into the pit was I think I had embedded myself into a crag. I popped two fingernails completely off as I fought to dig my hands into the tough soil. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if I was tearing all of the skin, tendons, and muscles off my fingers and hands as I scrabbled to hold onto something, anything. When I did finally find something that did not give way immediately, it felt suspiciously like a bone, possibly a femur. At that exact moment, though, I was going to thank whose ever leg it was for giving their life for mine and Linnick’s. I pulled up past my chest; I had my entire upper half over the lip when my left foot found an outcropping. I pushed myself about five feet away from the cliff edge. I crawled another ten feet before I rolled onto my back and passed out from exhaustion.
“I didn’t think you’d be able to do it; I said my prayers of finality.” Linnick whispered as I flowed from the world of the dead to that of dreamland—or so I thought. Dreams of a sort began, and good ones, thankfully.
“Michael, is that you?” It was Azile. She sounded like she was speaking through a rusted out and dented tin can; she looked like she was being broadcast over the air and I was attempting to receive her picture through some bent bunny-ear antennas extended with tin foil, but every part of it was welcome.
“It’s me,” I said, reaching out with my hand. She came in clearer, like I’d found the sweet spot with the antenna.
“You look awful,” she said tenderly.
I wanted to tell her that I was having some serious doubts about coming here, but there was nothing she could do about it, not now. All I would succeed in doing was making her even more nervous.
“Stumbled over a hole…twisted an ankle. I’ll be alright. Made a new friend.” Of course, I glossed over everything. One look at me and she knew I was lying through my teeth.
“This the type of friend that is trying to kill you, or a bona fide one?”
“I think mostly bona fide.”
“Allies in the underworld? I did not think such a thing possible. You must be careful.”
“Yeah me neither. And sure—I always am.”
Very loud silence came from her end in response. Then she finally spoke. “What is his name?”
“Linnick, her name is Linnick.”
“Her?” I heard a stab of jealousy.
“You afraid I’m getting some hellish side action, woman? Let me put your mind at ease. She’s about the size of a Matchbox car and looks like something you would find under a disposed of mattress that a hobo has been using at his underpass hovel.”
She didn’t seem completely convinced; I can’t blame her. If Linnick was an Amazonian supermodel I doubt I would describe her as such to Azile.
“Oh woman—I love you. And even if we weren’t a couple and Linnick was gorgeous, this place isn’t really all that conducive to romance.”
“I love you, Michael.” Before I could say goodbye, she faded out. The connection had been broken.
“Tallboat…Tallboat…” This, whispered in my ear. Literally. Linnick was resting on the outer edge of my ear and was speaking softly. “Do not speak, do not move; breathe as shallowly as you can.” The words were spiked with fear. Not sure how long I’d been asleep, but I felt better for it. I was trying to blink away the fog of my mind and was having a difficult time deciding whether I was awake or asleep or in that in-between strange zone where weird and unnatural things happen. I could feel my eyelids flutter, but there was no difference in the pitch of the darkness. I was as blind with them open as I was with them closed. I was convinced I was in that fugue state that I entered when I would astral project. I was aware enough to know my consciousness was separated from my body; I had partial control of my physical form, but not enough to make it operate adequately. It was a strange line to straddle. It had been highly enjoyable in my youth, but right now it pretty much sucked some of Trip’s oily mud hens through a bent straw. I focused hard and moved my right hand to wipe away the veil I felt was across my face. Linnick nearly lost her mind.
“If you even think about moving again I will tear a chunk of your meat free and make you eat it,” she hissed. I believed she could do that; it was cause for concern.
As I let the all-encompassing panic of potentially being blind wash around me, I heard something; this time it was not Linnick. It was on the far side of the cliff, away from the hole. It was soft, subtle even, the scraping of a fleshy scale against an imperfection in the ground. Snake was all I could think. Either one extremely large one or dozens of smaller ones were wriggling around not more than ten feet from my present location. It was impossible to tell if they were just passing by on a snake super highway or they were actively hunting for something, for me, maybe. When I heard the sniffing, I knew this couldn’t be snakes, at least not like any I had ever seen. I started running through a visual list of all the grotesqueries and carnival side-show freak images that I could. Snakes with pig faces. Humans with snake bodies. Scaly cats. Each image worse than the previous. Maybe this was something from Linnick’s world.
I tightened my grip on the axe handle I still comfortingly held in my right hand. Linnick must have sensed something on my part.
“It will kill and devour you before your mind can process the information.” She delivered this without a hint of aggrandizement and I had no reason to doubt her words. I had
a dozen questions, none of which I could ask. Lying helpless in wait is not one of my strongest positions. Something was making its way to me; not sure if it was an entire beast or maybe just an exploratory tentacle. The sniffing increased, stopped, then started again. I was holding my breath at this point. What was circling in was enormous—not Bledgrum enormous, but perhaps more powerful…certainly at least as deadly. This thing was intelligent, too. From one predator to another, I could sense its skill as it hunted in the dark. It was quiet, cautious; it used what was a detriment to most everything, not being able to see, to its benefit.
Something rustled not more than a foot from my head. I thought this was going to be it. I was desperately firing signals off from my brain to make my muscles move when I heard a shriek that sounded like a man getting his genitals caught in a wood chipper, minus the sound of the wood chipper. The tentacle or arm or whatever this thing was feeling around with reeled itself in rapidly, something terrified caught in its grasp. There was a heavy crunching as if the monster was biting through an animal covered in body armor, a turtle, perhaps some large insect with a thick exoskeleton. The slurping wet noises were disturbing, but substantially worse were what sounded like sighs of satisfaction from the monster as it ate. I did my best to pretend it was just some large man sitting at KFC going to town on some extra crispy chicken wings as he occasionally brought their slogan to fruition and did some serious finger lickin’.
At some points in your life, like when your favorite girl dumps you, or you end up in a hot zone during a war, or a loved one dies, you just figure that this is “it.” There is nothing that can ever be worse in your life. But for whatever inscrutable reason—the fates, the destinies, the malfeasant demi-gods—they prove you wrong, over and over again to the point where you would almost be better off embracing the current shit storm for what it is and thank it for not beating you any bloodier. Certainly, that’s not the usual human way of thinking; we generally don’t live long enough to learn that lesson. But when you start to carve into your two-hundreds…let’s just say I like to think I am beginning to catch on.
But the smell. If anything about my situation was going to make me move my ass, it was the smell of this thing. Now, I’m going to work on this for a minute and see if I can get it right. We’ll start with a port in New Orleans that has been besieged by industrial tidal waste and low tide. But that’s just the opening salvo. Picture a blue chem toilet next to this port; this particular honey pot is devoid of all blue chemicals, but full of everything else. The day is ninety-seven degrees, with ninety-two percent humidity. The air so wet that when you speak, the words drip to the ground. Nothing can escape the grasp of the moisture, especially not scent, which takes on a liquid quality. I see the bulb gaining brightness over your head.
For some reason, the National Fiber Board has decided to do a Summer rally here, kale freaks and steel-cut oat hippies are everywhere. There are brown rice brownies, bran flake bars, and Brussel sprout bites everywhere. Beano vendors are selling out of stock at a record pace; scientists are wondering if they could somehow harness the flatulence to power the city for the month before the ozone layer above the city is gone forever. Alan Harkman of Idaho Falls, Idaho has found himself in desperate need of relief; his split pea almond soup has started to work its magic on the two quarter pounders with cheese he devoured on the sly, while his girlfriend Kaitlyn, a self-described vegan of over ten years, sleeps.
Alan hated pretending to be vegan, but it was worth every bean burger to look at Kaitlyn’s lithe and toned body when they made love; besides, she usually lacked energy from not eating enough protein and fell asleep early, at which point Alan could eat anything he liked. Although he thought she might be getting suspicious. He’d gotten sloppy once and left an Arby’s wrapper at the top of the trash. He’d lied and told her they had veggie wraps now. Big mistake; because now she made him get her one at least once a week. He had to go halfway across town to Pete’s sandwich shop, get what she liked, then go back to Arby’s to get a wrapper for it. The charade would be over soon but he was going to ride the bumper cars until the carnival barker told him to get off.
Anyway, back to Alan’s expanding colon. The dearth of so many overstretched anuses has taxed the limits of the un-chem toilet. Bricks of feces, having forced all the liquid out of the bowl and onto the floor and surrounding ground, gave the area around the toilets a greenish, alien landscape feel. Fat sweat droplets fell from Alan’s forehead as he waited in line; pain racked his gut, causing him to double over more than once clutching at his stomach and sometimes at his rear, he was flexing his butt cheeks tight, in the hopes of keeping what sought the light securely in the dark. By the time big Betty Bartholomew birthed her own brown baby, Alan was hunched over as he duck-walked into the now empty potty.
The heat inside was unbearable, as if the contents of the bowl were on the verge of spontaneous combustion. He panicked for a moment when he did not feel that he could get enough air. He closed the door and simultaneously fumbled with the turn lock and the button on the top of his pants. The button would not yield and he was forced to push his pants down without undoing them. A lot of very unfortunate events rapidly transpired next. First, Alan did not spare a glance behind him as he sat. Had he done so he would have realized that big Betty had filled in the remaining crevasses within the toilet and she’d actually made a “grunt sculpture” that came up and over the rim and was parked halfway onto the seat. He sat on it, rather in it, causing the artwork to flatten out and coat his left leg from knee to ass. If this is making you gag, stop reading now, for if this was not bad enough, as he leaned over to puke, his balls and penis sank down into the mounds of muck and bile, the warm feeling not completely unwelcome to his junk until his brain realized exactly what he was linking with. He lost all ability for rational thought, yet his colon still had its own pressing needs.
Another strike against Alan was that Kaitlyn was very much into hipsters and their skinny jeans. Alan had previously made fun of those males preening around in their restrictive pants, but when Kaitlyn had bought him a pair and thought he looked wonderful in them he’d had no choice but to wear them, especially when it seemed that she wanted to take them off of him almost as fast as he put them on. Because he had not been able to get the fly or zipper undone, his legs were therefore locked together tight from ankle to knee, leaving very little separation for his butt cheeks. This caused the voluminous sewage that erupted from his ass to plume behind him as if it were a column of water shot from the back of a Sea-Doo. The shit aerated past the cinched-up anus as if it were coming from an aerosol can, coating the wall behind and Alan's entire back. For seven minutes, Alan alternated between vomiting, dipping his balls into warm rectal feedback pudding, and sending showers of shit up and behind him.
Many people in line vacated their spots to avoid being anywhere near what they figured was to be a crime scene. Alan’s retching and shrieks of misery brought others to witness what was happening. When he finally emerged from the environmentally friendly, paper-less hut of hell’s candy, he was covered nearly head to toe and even had dollops rolling off the top of his head. He walked straight across the broad, littered beach and straight into the foamy bay. It has been rumored the stink that came off of him was tangible and likely responsible for three deaths that day. Kaitlyn broke up with him that weekend, telling him that no vegetarian could possibly smell like that.
That…THAT, my friends, is what the beast next to me smelled like. I could hardly breathe; it was so thick I was filling up on the crap molecules I was taking in. I could tell Linnick was trying to take in the smallest breaths possible as well. The stench waxed and waned and eventually dissipated, yet the monster did not move off. In fact, it seemed as if it were about to take a nap after its particularly big and tasty meal. I was tensing up, hoping I could move slowly away.
“Do. Not. It is awake. It knows something is still out here and is attempting to lay a trap.”
I wanted to ask her how i
n the hell she knew but that was not possible; I had to take her word for it. I was in a slightly awkward position and the more I dwelled on it the more I wanted to adjust and of course, in addition, I had four active itches on my body that fully demanded I take care of them NOW. I did my best to still my mind, using techniques Tommy had taught me, it worked about as well as you could expect. “Easily distracted” doesn’t even begin to describe my pathetic attention span. ADD would be an improved diagnosis in my particular case. I have something more like Insufficient Interest Turmoil. My head moved of its own volition when, to my monster side, I heard what sounded like hundreds of poisonous darts being shot from long blow tubes. Fortunately, I’d not known then how close to the truth I was.
“Flutchers,” Linnick said, though it sounded like a swear. She attempted to move farther into my ear, which was adding a whole new dimension to my jimmy legs. Try keeping still while a talking beetle crawls into your ear canal.
Whatever flutchers were, they were landing around the entire area in, I guessed, a three sixty pattern. I couldn’t help but flinch when the first of them made contact with me. There was a sharp hiss from Linnick as I did so.
“This is going to be bad, Tallboat. You must stay quiet and still, though you will yearn to do anything but.”
Honestly, I thought she was full of shit and that I was some sort of superhero as the flutchers bounced harmlessly off my exposed skin and certainly off the parts of me that were covered by clothing. “Ha! Gonna have to do better than that, assholes. I’m too strong for your bullshit pointy things,” was what I said just as I felt the first pinch. Then another, then dozens, perhaps hundreds. The fire-ant torture from Lunos and Ganlin was excruciating; I’d thought that was “it” for me. But I’d yet to fully realize the depths of pain someone can experience. My blood felt as if it were boiling tomato sauce, erupting in huge blisters everywhere a dart had pricked my skin, my skin felt like it was spewing a caustic cocktail of lava and pus from the…pustules. My heart rate had to be closing in on two hundred beats a minute—if I could have had a thought, it would be that I was revving the engine to an unsustainable rate, about to crack the block.