The Oblivion Society

by Marcus Alexander Hart

  “Okay, okay, fine,” she conceded angrily. “You know what? I’ll go out with you tonight. If, and only if, you can get Boltzmann to give me my job back. Deal?”

  “You got it, lady,” Nick said happily. “I’ve already got us reservations at the Banyan Terrace for nine o’clock.”

  “And let me make this abundantly clear right now,” Vivian quickly added. “I am only agreeing to dinner, and that’s only for the sake of my job. This is not an all access pass. Understood?”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” Nick laughed. “I only want you to have some fun!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Missile after missile streaked through the sky in impossible numbers toward the oblivious cities below. In response, a single antiballistic Missile blazed up from the ground, intercepting three of the incoming warheads and vaporizing them in a ball of yellow light. Seconds later another ABM managed to eliminate two more attackers, but even with the missile defense operating at full speed, saving one city invariably meant sacrificing all the others.

  “God damn it, there’s just too many of them!”

  “Make every shot count! Use some strategy!”

  “I am! They’re too fast! And this stupid joystick sucks ass!” With the sound of a gravelly digital explosion, the dusty TV screen flashed through a cycle of apocalyptic 8-bit color. Bobby threw down the Atari 2600 joystick defeatedly.

  ” Missile Command sucks,” he barked. “Frickin’ Reagan-era, SDI bullshit.” He reached over the counter and turned off the console, erasing the game from the retro TV and replacing it with a poorly tuned broadcast of Jeopardy! Erik was working his usual night shift at the Planet Packrat Collectibles Emporium, and Bobby had tagged along to keep him company in the sparsely trafficked junk shop. Planet Packrat was a crumbling storefront in downtown Stillwater, and, like most crumbling storefronts downtown, it had previously been an adult video store before the city council had forced the seedier businesses out of the

  “historic district” and away from the sensitive eyes of the tourists. Within its cracked walls, Planet Packrat held the remains of a thousand forgotten childhoods. From the floor to the water-stained ceiling, hanging on the walls and piled on mismatched display racks were hundreds of incongruous toys, knickknacks, and widgets of an age not long past. Old, worn Star Wars action figures long since relieved of their plastic accessories gathered in mismatched heaps in shallow plastic bins. Two Voltron robots looked down from a shelf behind the counter, one complete, one missing the yellow lion that would have formed its left leg. In the corner of the front window sat a stuffed Mogwi with a plastic knife and fork rubber-banded to his hands, propped up against a cardboard sign reading

  “Open Till Midnight.”

  Although the sign outside promised “collectibles,” the reality was that Planet Packrat stocked any piece of junk that a ten-year-old would have wanted ten years ago. Yet despite the store’s comprehensive inventory, there was one thing that you would never find in Planet Packrat.

  Customers.

  Erik sat on a stool behind the tall glass display case that doubled as the checkout counter. He was holding a ragged, butterscotch-colored alley cat tightly in his arms, stroking her matted fur as if he was a villain in a James Bond movie. The cat’s mangy skin draped loosely over a pronounced spine, hanging in a sagging, long-since-postnatal paunch. She narrowed her eyes and thrashed her tail back and forth angrily.

  “Who’s the good kitty? I think you’re the good kitty! Such a good kitty kitty,” Erik cooed gently. ” Be-de-be-de-be-de! How’s it goin’, Twiki?” Erik’s loving voice was nothing more than an irritating warble in Twiki’s flea-bitten ears. Her attention was fixed on a tiny brown mouse that scurried toward a hole in the worm-eaten baseboard.

  “You must get so lonely when I’m not working, don’t you Twiki?” Erik continued.

  “You must love it when I come in here and give you some love. Don’t you, kitty?”

  “Erik, please,” Bobby growled. “Just put down the cat before you get hurt.”

  “Aww, lil’ Twiki wouldn’t hurt me.”

  Bobby narrowed his eyes.

  “What makes you think I was talking about Twiki?”

  With her eyes still locked on her rodent prey, Twiki made a desperate leap for the floor. Erik caught the flailing feline in mid-leap, turned her over, and continued to hold her lovingly in his unwelcome embrace.

  “Oh no you don’t!” he scolded, raising a finger to the cat’s defiant face. “No more killing mice! It’s a filthy habit! And I’m sick of cleaning up the carcasses. Do you understand me?”

  Twiki answered by hooking ten claws into Erik’s skinny forearm. His grip loosened with a pained squeak, and a half-second later Twiki had disappeared under a dusty shelf of Jem and the Holograms dolls. Erik dabbed at his fresh scratches and slumped against the counter.

  “I don’t see why you don’t just let her go ahead and exterminate the place,” Bobby said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s worse things than mice living in the walls of this shitbox building.”

  Erik shook his head defensively.

  “Don’t you know how dangerous it is for cats to chase mice? Haven’t you ever seen a Tom and Jerry cartoon?”

  Their exchange was cut short by the roar of an ill-maintained engine. They turned and peered out the wide front window. A rusted-out Ford Aerostar pulled up outside, sporting a bumper sticker proclaiming, “I still miss my ex … but my aim is improving! ”

  “Oh no. No no no,” Erik stammered. “Not again. Not tonight.” In the passenger seat of the minivan was a woman oozing an aura of spent sexuality through a thick screen of exhaustion and ennui. She adjusted her sagging breasts in her worn halter-top and took a long, sultry-cum-suicidal drag on an unfiltered cigarette.

  But Erik didn’t notice her.

  The driver of the Aerostar was a rugged, sun-beaten man whose hair seemed to be locked in a struggle between “Young Elvis” and “NASCAR enthusiast.” The dried rawhide of his cheeks stretched tightly across his skull as his yellowed teeth worked over a mashed toothpick. He looked like a man with a short temper and the build to back it up when push came to shove.

  Erik didn’t notice him either.

  No, Erik’s trembling glare was focused on the minivan’s rear door as it slid open to reveal two grimy, doe-eyed children.

  “Well, gotta go,” Bobby said suddenly, leaping from his stool. “It’s beer o’clock!”

  “No!” Erik chirped, clutching his friend’s arm. “Come on, Bobby, don’t leave me alone with them again!”

  Bobby shook off Erik’s bony-knuckled grip and raised a finger pointedly as he backed toward the door. “I live by the rules of Thunderdome,” he said dramatically.

  “Two kids enter, one man leaves.”

  Erik scowled. Although he had never actually met Richard Stokes, he had become all too familiar with the children of his failed marriage. Stokes had no doubt been a patron of this decaying building in its previous incarnation, and when the sex shop closed down, he had clearly seen it as a sign that he needed to take his vices to the next level. These days, this sleepy collectibles store served as his primary child-care facility while he became intimately acquainted with every lady of the night south of the Mason-Dixon line.

  “Don’t go! Please, Bobby!” Erik implored. “I can’t take another night alone with the gruesome twosome! I’m begging you. As your best friend. Please. ” Bobby looked over his shoulder out the window, then back at Erik. Finally he let out a long sigh.

  “Okay, I’ll stay and help you,” he said stoically. “After all, you are my best friend. I would never leave you when the goin’ gets tough.”

  A relieved smile spread across Erik’s face. “Really, Bobby?”

  “Nah, I was just messin’ with ya.”

  With that, Bobby yanked open the front door, allowing the two abandoned children to spill inside. He threw a final salute to Erik as he slid into the street.

  “Catch you tomor
row, chump,” he said. “Have fun baby-sitting.” Erik fumed as his alleged best friend bobbed past the front display window and off into the sunset. He was now completely alone.

  Alone with Debbie and Harry.

  As a connoisseur of ‘80s music, Erik had once found the Stokes siblings’ names to be amusing. That was before he had discovered that one way or another they were going to get him. To get him, get him, get him, get him.

  Harry Stokes was the younger of the pair, at five years of age. He was a pint-sized kleptomaniac, perpetually wrapped in an oversized Army jacket covered with greedy pockets. Erik always made a point to check Harry for merchandise before releasing him back into the wild, yet somehow things always seemed to go missing after he and his sister had been in the store.

  Debbie Stokes was twelve. She was the kind of girl who said things like “girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice” to cover up the fact that she was, in fact, completely horrid. To the untrained eye Debbie looked cute, if a bit dingy. Although she was not overweight, her body had a cherubic roundness of baby fat that had not yet burned away, and she wore nothing but shades of faded pink, from her canvas shoes to the barrettes holding her hair in darling little pigtails. The two siblings strolled into the store and looked around as if casing the joint. Harry noticed an ALF doll perched on a high shelf, and he pushed a stream of drivel through the filter of his speech impediment.

  “Ooooh! Cuuuuuwl! I wan play widda Fuwby!” he jabbered. “My fwiend hadda Fuwby buh isa biwd anda Fuwby is weiwed I don’ tink I wanda Fuwby fowkeeps bucan I pway widdit, Debbie pweeees?”

  Calloused to her brother’s prattle, Debbie scanned the floor intently with tiny blue eyes. She spotted what she was looking for between two rows of dusty shelves.

  “The kitty!” she yelled happily. “I see you, kitty kitty! I’m gonna get you!” Twiki was sitting, licking her matted fur. When she heard that voice she looked up with wide, golden eyes, sprang to her feet, and slowly backed away in dread. Debbie looked at Erik, then at Harry. She put her hand on her brother’s shoulder and pointed toward a shelf of FernGully: The Last Rainforest paraphernalia.

  “You go play, Harry,” she said shiftily. “I’m gonna go get the kitty!” With a giggling squeal, Debbie ran off after Twiki, and the two of them disappeared into the shadowy fringes of the store. Harry toddled over to the shelf and picked up a Batty Koda doll.

  “Ooooo, cuuuuuwl! Lookada cwazy bat! I wanda keepa cwazy bat!” Erik watched Harry stuff the doll into his coat pocket without a second thought. He shook his head sadly and turned off the television set. He didn’t need to be watching a snowy image of Alex Trebek. He needed to be watching Harry Stokes. It was the inventory of Planet Packrat that was now truly in jeopardy.

  The monolithic screen of Bobby’s TV quietly flickered the ongoing game of Jeopardy! in front of Vivian’s half-lidded eyes. She sat in a deep slouch on the sofa with her feet on the makeshift coffee table, jabbing Han Solo in the gut with her bare heels. Her chin was pressed drowsily into her horizontal chest, and her limp arms sprawled out across the cushions to each side of her like empty sleeves. To look at her, one might imagine that Vivian had suddenly been relieved of her entire underlying bone structure.

  Watching Jeopardy! was something of a guilty pleasure for Vivian, although she knew that she could never win the game if she was actually a contestant-not because she didn’t know the answers but because, as a matter of principle, she refused to follow the pointless syntactical charade of phrasing them in the form of questions. After all, she reasoned, if you actually asked a guy, “What is green?” and he replied,

  “As high-energy particles collide with Earth’s upper atmosphere, valence electrons bind to neutral atoms, releasing photons in wavelengths of this color, forming the polar auroras,” you would punch him right in the mouth.

  Although she had already cleared most of the board, Vivian’s mind wasn’t really in the game tonight. She couldn’t stop thinking about Nick. Or rather, her date with Nick. Or more specifically, how to get out of her date with Nick.

  “Instead of spark plugs,” Alex Trebek droned, “a diesel engine ignites its fuel mechanically by using this to create heat through the properties of Charles’s law.” Vivian wondered how she had gotten herself into this situation. All she had wanted to do was go to work, come home, and go to bed. She didn’t need this kind of stress. She didn’t need this kind of …

  “Pressure,” she said aloud.

  “What is pressure?” the television contestant answered properly.

  “That is correct.”

  “I’ll take ‘To Your Health’ for three hundred, Alex.”

  “As esophageal cancer cells multiply at an uncontrolled rate, they pose a threat to their host organism through this unrelated biological process.” Vivian couldn’t stand the idea of being blackmailed by the likes of Nick. Maybe she just wouldn’t show up. After all, what was the worst that could happen to her if she lost her stupid job?

  “Starvation,” she grumbled.

  “Starvation is correct,” Alex Trebek confirmed. “Potentially leading to death.” Vivian crossed her arms and glowered as the game rolled on.

  “Realizing that human muscle strength was insufficient to emulate the flight of birds, in 1480 Leonardo da Vinci designed a different kind of flying machine based around a rotating blade in this shape.”

  Vivian’s sense of helplessness boiled into a sort of affronted anger. What made her so special anyway? Out of every girl that Nick saw today, why did he have to choose her to close in on for the kill? They obviously had nothing in common to talk about. What did he think they were going to do all night?

  “Screw,” Vivian smirked.

  “Screw is correct,” Alex Trebek agreed.

  Vivian nodded at the TV and drew herself into a psychologically violated ball. As she clasped her knees to her chest, her stomach let out a low, rolling growl. She knew better than to check the kitchen for groceries. She hadn’t brought any home, and the odds that Bobby had were just slightly lower than the odds that he would be hired as a waitress at the Hooters on Songbird Key. At the urging of her stomach’s continued rumble, she reluctantly grabbed the only consumable in the apartment. A warm bottle of Fusion Fuel.

  She twisted off the cap and took a hesitant sip, and a sharp, dry tang of bitter carbonation seared across her tongue. She found the flavor to be completely overbearing and foul, which was poetic in a way, because she felt the same way about the person who had given it to her.

  “I’ll take ‘Basic Instincts’ for one hundred, Alex.”

  “Contrary to popular belief, this colorblind mammal is compelled to attack by erratic motion, not by crimson hues.”

  Vivian moaned in self-pity. Even if she wanted to go on this date, she couldn’t. She was too tired to get off the couch, let alone drive all the way up to Port Manatee for dinner. Plus she didn’t have the right kind of clothes for a fancy restaurant. And she hated wearing makeup.

  “Bull,” she sighed.

  “Absolutely,” Alex Trebek agreed. “It is ‘bull.’” Vivian raised an eyebrow at the screen, then shrugged. All right, she conceded this point: Her laundry list of excuses was complete bull. She just didn’t want to go. That was that. She didn’t need to justify herself to Alex Trebek. Yet there was a twinge of self-doubt in the back of her mind.

  “I’ll take ‘Brain Bits’ for five hundred, please.”

  “Buried deep within the cerebrum, the amygdala is the part of the limbic system that is chiefly responsible for behavior associated with this emotion.” Okay, sure, Nick was a shallow, spastic idiot, but she’d done far worse things for the sake of keeping her job than going out on a single date with a gorgeous model. Plus the price of a meal at the Banyan Terrace was roughly equivalent to her monthly rent. She’d be crazy to turn down the opportunity to go there for free. So why did she still feel so strongly about staying home?

  “Fear,” she said coldly.

  “Fear is correct,”
Alex Trebek nodded. “Pure, primal fear.”

  “Oh shut up, you,” Vivian grumbled.

  She took a hardy swig of her Fusion Fuel and suddenly realized that she had already drunk half of the bottle. The inside of her mouth felt fresh and tingly, coated in a smooth, pleasant whisper of citrus flavor. She tipped back the bottle and took another sip, realizing that once she had gotten past the initial sting, she did, in fact, like Fusion Fuel after all. Her nose wrinkled irritably. Was this supposed to be symbolic or something? “I spend the whole day resisting it and then finally take the plunge, only to find out that I actually like it once I give it a chance?” she thought. Nahh. It was just another stupid coincidence. She emptied the bottle and threw a glance at the TV.

  “All right, Alex Trebek, you’ve got all the answers,” she said sarcastically. “What do you think? Should I go on this stupid date or not?”

  ” This three-word slogan has been used by Nike since 1988.” Vivian poked a button on the remote control and the gigantic screen went black.

  “Okay, okay, fine. I’ll go on the date,” she surrendered. “At least he’s not taking me to one of those crummy tropical-themed places downtown.”

  The setting sun blazed in the shuttered shop windows of Main Street as Bobby made his way down the abandoned sidewalk. Unfortunately for the few local residents under retirement age, Stillwater’s downtown community had found it economically prudent to structure its business hours around the “Early to bed, early to rise” sleep schedule of the elderly. The faint melody of a lousy reggae cover of

  “1999” led Bobby to the only business outside of Planet Packrat still open at this hour: the Bikini Martini.

  The Bikini Martini was an overdone theme bar that was obviously designed to draw in the kind of tourist who was not aware that Florida was not a Polynesian island. The open-air structure of the building was made of wooden logs securely bolted together and cosmetically tied with coarse rope, creating the illusion of Gilligan’s Island with a building safety code. The bar itself was a freestanding island of stout bamboo poles and thatched palm fronds, but the few surrounding tables were standard-issue white plastic patio furniture sprouting Budweiser umbrellas.