by Poss, Bryant
Errr the metal moaning in the wind.
“Cillian, you see that metal structure there?” he pointed to the left.
“The silver one, yeah?”
“There’s a ladder just around the right side of it. I saw it when I came in, took note of it. Just run to the structure then around it to the right. When you hit the ladder, start climbing.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you, man, but you’ve got to run. Beat the ground like you never have before, got it? They’re faster than we are, and we only have seconds.”
“Okay,” Cillian said, breathing deeply through his nose. He wanted to argue that Ben was faster than he was, and he should just go for it, but Cillian knew that’s not how the world worked, not how it should work either. Ben was trying to get them both out of here. “Okay, I’m ready. Say wh—”
“Go now!” Ben’s voice was no longer a whisper, the sound of quickly padding feet playing in the background.
Ben heard the tapping of Cillian’s shoes on the gravel match the tempo of the spazzo known to be on the way, and he waited. Ben had seen first-hand how fast these things moved and given the distance to the tall structure where gravel was loaded, he knew they both couldn’t make it to the ladder in time. Trying to block the rhythm of Cillian’s feet, Ben faced the direction he’d heard the chaotic shuffling before. Darkness there and nothing more. He couldn’t help but smile at the line from the poem stuck in his head, but he knew good and well there was more than a raven rapping at his chamber door. The first thing the silver light allowed was the face, and the sight nearly took Ben’s concentration away. It had been a man at one time. The remnants of a suit made that fact easy enough to discern, but now it was pure rage if such a thing could be personified, and obviously it could. Its eyes were white and wild, untouched as was the rest of its face. The red tie, or the color that appeared a deep maroon in the moonlight, flapped over its shoulder with every step like a ship’s flag popping in the wind, but Ben made no mistake. No matter how much of a man it still resembled, it was the furthest thing from it. This was speed and ferocity with a determination matched by nothing else. It came at him at a ludicrous pace showing no sign of fatigue, no panting breath, but Ben held firm, raising the .40 with both hands, and exhaling with his aim. He waited for the spazzo to get close enough, and he didn’t have to wait long. When the head made up significant percentage of his field of vision, he squeezed, the flash of the muzzle eliminating the adjustment of his pupils like a single-pulse strobe before he heard the bang, and he watched the spazzo spin from the impact. Ben sidestepped as the body stumbled by him then he looked off slightly to the side of where he thought the spazzo might be, remembering something from high school psychology about the rods of the eye serving more purpose in night vision at the edges of the iris. He vaguely remembered an experiment where a number was held up in a dark room that couldn’t be read if looked at directly but could be identified if looked at off center in darkness.
Ben kept dynamic tension on the grip of the pistol, turning on his heels, futilely squinting into the darkness at where he thought the figure should go. After a few seconds, there was the stir of the gravel and again movement. He watched and waited.
“Ben, are you all right?” the yell came from exactly where he knew it would, and the trailing of the voice barely left before he heard the tapping of the footsteps head away from him. The spazzo was up and headed toward the voice.
“Goddammit,” he said mostly to himself as he took off toward the spazzo running away from him. “Climb, Cillian!” he managed to get out, the gun out in front of him while he ran as fast as he could, making any aiming as awkward as he could imagine. Squeezing off another round, lighting up the surroundings like a camera, Ben saw the spazzo ahead, and he thought surely he hit it, but if he did no sign was given.
The clang of metal as the spazzo hit the ladder first. Ben could only imagine the scenario with the pitiful light. Was Cillian at the top of the ladder waiting to kick the spazzo off as it reached the top? Would the spazzo fall for something like that? Could it see in the damn dark? So many questions unable to be answered and zero time to contemplate, Ben hit the bottom of the ladder a few seconds later, trying to listen past the sound of his own sporadic heartbeat and rapid breathing to hear anything from Cillian. Tap clang tap clang the metal of the pistol in his hand hitting every rung of the ladder as he ascended. The moon allowed him to see just above his hand, but he didn’t want to grab the spazzo’s ankle and have to deal with such ferocity in close quarters. It wasn’t until he reached the top rung that he really clenched up, realizing that the only place the two could be was on the small top of this narrow structure some forty feet off the ground.
“Cillian!” he hissed forcefully and waited for a reply. Several seconds went by before he heard the whizz pass his ear.
Ben shot a look left and right, trying to figure out where the noise came from and what it was, but it didn’t matter. Cillian broke his concentration with his warning.
“Ben, get down!” there was a flap like a giant rubber band then a sickening thud. Ben heard the impact just before he heard the loud thump against the metal roof. The vibration came through his boots.
“Cillian!” He yelled.
“I got him!” he heard the boy say triumphantly then, “Oh shit!”
The gurgle of the spazzo was unmistakable, and Ben heard the sound of a body moving around on the tin roof. The fact that he couldn’t see what was going on was the most infuriating experience of his life. Ben held the gun up, swaying it over ninety degrees back and forth, knowing good and well he couldn’t fire without Cillian’s location.
“Stay down!” was all he heard from the boy then another slap of rubber. This time the thump was a little more solid, like a rock hitting plywood, and Ben heard the gurgle of the spazzo one last time as it faded quickly, falling from the platform from which they stood. Feeling before every step, he made his way to the place he thought Cillian must be. A full agonizing minute passed, sixty seconds where Ben contemplated what he should do next, but his internal question was finally answered.
“Ben?” Cillian’s voice a whisper on the wind.
“Yeah?”
“Did I get it?”
“Get it with what?” Ben asked frantically.
“My slingshot.”
“Your what!?”
Ben squinted down through the darkness, but there wasn’t enough light for him to make out what was on the ground, so he eased back down the ladder. Before he reached the bottom, he could make out the silhouette of the spazzo, body twisted on the gravel below in the moonlight. Blinking his eyes several times, he refused to believe what he saw. He was tired. He had just been tortured by a lunatic after recently escaping the custody of said lunatic in order to gather medicine for the woman he barely knew yet knew he loved. Shaking his head and blinking again, he saw clearly the spazzo’s body unmoving, the outline unresponsive. He felt the presence of the boy before hearing him.
“Heh, I got em,” sounding like a middle-aged Jack Nicholson.
“You sure as hell did,” Ben responded, shaking his head and laughing. “With a goddamn slingshot.”
They made their way down the ladder, the barking of the dogs growing closer with every second. Standing on the ground, Ben held out his hand.
“We’re safe here,” his heart thumping in his chest like a funeral march. “What do you think? We stay up here tonight and rest?”
“Then what?” Cillian’s breath could also be heard between every word. “Hope the dogs fall asleep and we tiptoe past them? I think it’s now or never.”
Several seconds went by but not too many. Ben could feel the logic in what the boy had said.
“Kiss my ass,” he said playfully, and they both started their trek across the gravel, but Ben couldn’t help but take a closer look at the spazzo.
One leg was broken at a nauseating angle at the knee, the appendage lying there without moving, one
arm tucked underneath the body also at an unnatural angle. The head was turned far past the ninety degrees allowed by nature, but its eyes were open and aware, the moon on this clear night giving them the ability to see it. A rasping gurgle came from its mouth emanating from the back of the throat as it tried to move, tried to get to them from where it lay now helpless. They stood looking at it for several moments.
“Should we put it out of its misery?” Cillian asked with slingshot pulled halfway back.
“What are you using for ammo?”
“Bullets,” Cillian replied with a shrug. “It’s all I had.”
Ben laughed.
“Me too,” he said, holding up the .40 at the head of what used to be a man on the ground. “I don’t know if its misery or not, man. I don’t know if it feels at all. I do know that they are about as hard to kill as a damn cow ant.” He squeezed the trigger then stopped himself, shaking his head. “Can’t risk it, man. Everybody within a mile will hear the shot.”
With a nod of his head, Cillian loaded his slingshot, the frame placing the pressure on his forearm so he could pull far back. He took aim and loosed, the impact taking Ben by surprise. There was a sickening thock as the bullet and its casing went into the spazzo’s skull, the head rocking back and the gurgling breath ceasing to disrupt the quiet night air. Ben raised his eyebrows.
“Dayum,” he said with a grunt.
“Yeah,” Cillian murmured morosely.
“Probably need to get some different ammo.”
The next time they saw an opening it was across the street from the school. The dogs had made no sound for quite some time. Thankfully they weren’t the kind of dogs witnessed in movies. These weren’t bloodhounds or hunting dogs trained for years in the fine art of tracking. These were whatever canines Marshal and his people could find, everything from Yorkies to Labradors, Shih Tzu to mutt. These were hardly the hounds of “The Most Dangerous Game.” It was Cillian this time who held his hand out to Ben, stopping him at the tree line to whisper to him the best way in. After the spazzo, they’d come into contact with several pokies in the woods, all easily avoided. Here at the end of the line, they wanted to make sure that nothing kept them from getting to the place they both wanted to be.
“We have to throw them off,” Cillian said even to his own surprise after explaining to Ben the best way into the school. When the man looked at him curiously, he just nodded and continued. “We’ve got dogs on our trail, or we know they’ll use them at any rate. If we go directly into the school now, there won’t be any question where we are, but if we go up the highway for a bit, any attempt they make to track us will be far more difficult. This is a good opportunity to throw them off.”
“And how long is a bit?” Ben asked honestly, not disagreeing at all with the boy’s idea.
“A mile, two would be better.”
“Then let’s go,” Ben answered immediately, the exhaustion in his voice unavoidable.
The moon passed over along with the stars and the two found themselves all the way up Highway 22, nearly two miles to the train tracks that cut the road and the woods like the straightest of scars. They knelt, both breathing heavily with fatigue and satisfaction, but to their satisfaction, to their contentment at least, there was no sound from the dogs, no sound from anything as a matter of fact. They had been out all night. The sun made its way around to obliterate the darkness, and it wouldn’t be more than three quarters of an hour at most before the edge of the orb topped the trees. The air and the sky had that feeling to it, the stars dissipating with the anticipation.
They made their way back with little difficulty, staying close to the road this time to make the travel move more swiftly. Once again the school was in sight, and by the time they’d crawled through the opening of the bookroom window, they couldn’t help but smile and groan at the same time with a sort of giddy weariness that came with the sense of immovable accomplishment. Inside the building, Cillian steered them around the pokies captured as a ploy and finally to the shop room that had become their home. They knocked on the door, and it was Alice who let them in, her arms wrapping tightly around Cillian, and he couldn’t’ help but return the gesture in full, Ben watching him with a tired smile. He didn’t wait for a heartfelt reunion. Making his way to the stub of a candle on the floor by her head, Ben first walked then crawled to the spot where Lotus lay, a heat emanating from her he could feel before he settled. He motioned quickly for someone to bring him water and cupping the back of her neck with his hand with a gentleness an egg picker would envy, he tilted her chin up and placed the pills from the bag in her mouth assisting them down with the water then he bent over and kissed her lips, lingering there and seeming to smell her for a full minute. Leaning back, he pulled Luck from deep in his pocket and gripped it tight, letting it rest on her chest but still in his grasp. He fell asleep right there, sitting up with her head in his lap, the morning sun just throwing its first rays through the office window that bordered the room—
There is no comfort from the aching and the cold heat. The flu as a child was the only time she could remember feeling anything close to this, and it was no real comparison, but she felt a wave just now, an unfolding of comfort that rolled from her head to her feet then subsided, but the pain was not as ferocious. Her posture felt better, but that wasn’t it. A feeling, almost as if a protector had come to her after so much pleading. Was it medicine? Perhaps, but it felt like something else, something more than merely chemicals, internal boosting. She felt—did she really—as if some reliance had been fulfilled, something besides self-reliance. That was an interesting feeling, to know that your care was in the hands of another and have no worry, less even than if one had no one but oneself. What would her mother say? She’d say that was wrong. Always take care of yourself. You can love another if possible, but never rely on them. Was that true? Could a person even have one without the other? There was someone there. She could feel him now, her? Someone was there, and the pain became tolerable. Sleep was coming, a welcome escape. Without opening her eyes, she let it take her, no longer wanting to fight or take charge. She let it take her, just a brief respite from the fever and the pain in her shoulder—
I discovered the cut for the first time as a girl, barely older than the boy with me now. Debilitating anxiety plagued me; it was inescapable. That’s how anxiety works. No matter where you go, there you are. It started with people, merely being around them would set it off, but it eventually spread from there like a cancer or virus. Cancer seems a more apt description, as its progression is slower, giving a person time to fully accept the progression unlike the swiftness of a virus that sweeps a person up in symptoms without pause. I felt trapped inside my skin, every thought a douse of kerosene on a steadily burning fire. I was just a child with no real sense of how to explain it, but I had to live with it. The way I found some reprieve was by sheer accident. During the height of an anxiety attack, I found myself blessedly in the solace of my own room—this itself was little relief but much better than a desk in a crowded classroom—when upon diving onto my bed my hand became wedged between the bars of my cast iron headboard and the wall, sending a lightning bolt of pain up my arm, the kind of jolt that takes your breath away. It was here I realized that the pain took my mind away from the anxiety, alleviated my cognition so to speak. The solace didn’t last long, as the feeling quickly came back to my tingling fingers, and the pain withdrew entirely, only a dull ache remaining, not enough to focus on. Not long after that, the anxiety crept back into place like an animal once frightened away by fire but eventually realizing the threat had extinguished.
Needing a longer-lasting release, I eventually found that the edge of a razor obtained by breaking one of my father’s blue safety razors and carefully extracting the blade to be the best course. I made mistakes at first, such as making marks visible even when wearing clothes. That was foolish, and after explaining that the marks on my forearms were scrapes, I discovered my upper thigh and between my toes. I found this
even more satisfying as the rubbing of my jeans and discomfort of my walk irritated the wounds, dragging the pain out sometimes for days. This got me through my teenage years. No one alive ever knew my struggle. I was always careful to handle it myself, although there were times I’m sure that my father suspected something. My mother would have been proud at how well I handled myself.
I graduated high school from home earlier than I should have, barely seventeen, but I found myself facing the world with more freedom than allowed by the walls of my parents’ house. Again, by an act of complete accident, providence I’m willing to say, I found a new release, one far more productive. Like escaping my childhood, I found that I had evolved in my method of dealing with my anxiety. I soon found solace through acts of carnal pleasure with both sexes, and to be sure I found this thoroughly enjoyable along with relieving. There was no shame in any of my undertakings. At least I could thank my parents for that much of my upbringing, but pain was still the most welcome; however, it had to be pain I controlled.
My first tattoo only lasted half an hour, a lotus blossom on my ankle, a mark I felt owed to my father for the sake of my name. It was thirty minutes of bliss, and I soon found myself working an extra job to support my new habit, acts that helped define me as the person I am. Each picture or script a piece of puzzle to complete the whole, but it was an expensive retreat, one that I did not want to overtake me. After so many trips to have work done, I decided that relying on external, physical remedies could not be maintained for the rest of my existence, and I needed to find a more subtle, permanent solution. My anxiety had controlled me for long enough, and it was time that I took responsibility for taking control of it instead. My quest for relief started the only way I knew how, through chemicals. I tried the different western medicines that were to alter my brain chemistry, take the worry away replacing it with docility, and it worked. My anxiety dissipated with each pill, but so too did my cognition, my carnal drive, sacrifices willing to be made by most. After all, who wouldn’t cut off appendages to escape the animal of the brain, but I was young, and I wanted to find out if there was any other way, any other road to travel before sacrificing some of the attributes that made me who I was.