The Oblivion Society

by Marcus Alexander Hart

  Erik blinked.

  “It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?” he said.

  “What’s weird about it?” Sherri grinned, running a slender hand down his rodent arm. “You get a hot, busty blond girl; I get a guy with two grotesquely mutated rat arms. I think we’d both get our money’s worth out of the deal.”

  Erik shook his head and tapped on the fried computer.

  “No, I mean the laptop. It seems out of place here on the bar, doesn’t it?” Sherri’s eyebrows knitted in frustration.

  “Yeah, it’s all wrong,” she scowled. “Let’s do something about it.” With a swipe of her arm, she slapped the black clamshell off of the bar, dropping it to the floor with a clatter of displaced plastic keys. The startled blue saucers of Erik’s eyes finally landed on Sherri as she leapt behind the bar, landing with a crunch of heavy boots on delicate electronics.

  “There,” she said sweetly. “Now that I have your undivided attention.” Before Erik could say a word, Sherri grabbed him by the collar of his damp T-shirt and pulled his face down into hers. He felt her smooth lips pressing against his own cracked mouth. He could taste the faint tang of old cabbage and cigarettes being brushed over his tongue by Sherri’s passionate counterpart. He could feel a pair of hands grabbing his mutated limbs and pulling them around a hot, fleshy hourglass of perfect feminine curves that pushed throbbing waves of lust through his slim, bony body.

  It was, in short, the most erotic thing that had ever happened to Erik in his entire pathetic life.

  Yet as Sherri’s tiny hands began to fumble with the button on the front of his jeans, all four of Erik’s hands took hold of her body and gently pushed her away.

  “No, no, Sherri,” he said softly. “Don’t. I can’t do this.” Sherri smiled a dirty little smile.

  “Oh yeah? Well, I think your little friend disagrees!”

  With that, her tiny bronze hand swung forward, grabbing a generous fistful of Erik’s denim-clad groin. The look of surprise that snapped onto Erik’s face was eclipsed only by the one that snapped onto Sherri’s. She let go of her flaccid handful and spoke with soft astonishment.

  “Your little friend doesn’t disagree. What the hell, Erik? Are you queer or something?”

  Erik bowed his head and blushed.

  “I am not queer,” he muttered. “It’s just I … I just don’t like you that way.”

  “What do you mean, that way? ” Sherri asked incredulously. “I’ve turned into the Playboy Princess of Candyland and you still won’t fuck me? What’s your problem?” Erik scowled with embarrassment.

  “Most guys don’t have such a cavalier attitude toward sex as you do, Sherri.”

  “Bullshit!” Sherri spat. “Like you’ve never just gone out and fucked some girl before!”

  Erik’s already reddened cheeks turned a brighter shade of crimson. Sherri shook her head in disbelief.

  “Holy shit, you’ve never fucked a girl before,” she muttered. “Please tell me that you have some kind of condition, and you’re not just ‘saving yourself for that one special girl.’”

  “So what if I am?” Erik barked. “What do you care?! You don’t even like me!

  The only reason you want to do me at all is because of these!”

  He raised his rodent arms and wiggled their gnarled fingertips angrily. Sherri pursed her lips in acknowledgment.

  “Well, it wouldn’t matter if you had ten arms now,” she sighed disappointedly.

  “Your dumb virgin ass wouldn’t know what to do with them once you got my panties off anyway.”

  Erik nodded in a weak sort of agreement. Sherri leapt back up on the bar and lit a fuming post-coital cigarette that wasn’t.

  “So, we’re cool then?” Erik said hopefully.

  “No. I’m cool,” Sherri corrected. ” You’re pretty fucking far from cool. I don’t fuck virgins. I’m not some kind of remedial sex-ed class for losers.” Erik smiled a relieved little smile.

  “Thanks for understanding, Sherri,” he said, extending a friendly hand. “Still friends?”

  Sherri shook her head with a disbelieving little laugh.

  “Just get away from me, Sievert,” she sighed. “Christ, I can’t believe I almost fucked an Afterschool Special.”

  “What’s the T got to do to show you that you’re his special girl, Vivi?” Vivian sighed.

  “If I really was your ‘special girl,’ you wouldn’t have to ask,” she said. “Just give it up, Trent. I’m sure you’ll find somebody out there who’s a better fit for you than I am. There’s plenty of other fish in the sea, you know.”

  “Are there?” Trent asked skeptically.

  Vivian nodded optimistically.

  “I’m sure of it,” she said. “I know there’s at least one.” Trent looked across the bowling alley at Sherri’s perfect behind perched on the bar.

  “You’re right,” he grinned. “And what a fine piece of tail it is!”

  “Look, Sherri, Trent’s been throwing out bait for you since day one,” Erik offered. “If you’re just looking for a meaningless quickie, maybe you should just bite already.”

  Sherri’s eyebrows lowered with a cold, disgusted menace.

  “Fuck you. I’d rather die than be teamed up with that douchebag.”

  “Fuck me! Why do I have to be teamed up with this douchebag?”

  “It’s all good, Goldilocccks,” Trent slurred. “Don’t worry, girl. This one has

  ‘shtrike’ written all over it, cho. This is th’ good one.”

  Leaning heavily on his crutch, Trent drunkenly hobbled up to the line and hurled a chipped bowling ball down the dusty lane. Five feet later it dropped with a pathetic bang into the gutter, where it rolled agonizingly slowly until it passed ten standing pins.

  “You schuck, Trent,” Sherri snarled. “Fuck this shit. I wanna new teammate.” Erik was slouched behind a score table littered with at least two dozen empty beer bottles. His hand moved with all of the delicate subtlety of an arcade claw machine as he marked down Trent’s final gutter ball on a score sheet documenting the worst game of bowling in recorded history.

  “It’s not like it really mattersh which one of us is on your team, Sherri,” he said vacantly. “We’re in the tenth frame and nobody’sh hit a damn thing yet.”

  “At least it saves us from havin’ to reset the pins,” Vivian shrugged wearily. Erik pointed at Vivian with the nub of his chewed-up golf pencil.

  “You’re up, Viv,” he said. “Tenth frame. Make it count. Thissiz our team’s last chance to hit some pins.”

  Vivian pushed herself to her feet and a wave of hops-and-barley disorientation swirled around the inside of her brainpan. She leaned against the score table with a clumsy giggle.

  “Hit some pinsh?” she laughed. “After nine beers, I’ll be lucky if I can hit the lane!”

  “Come on, Viv,” Erik smiled. “I know you can do it.” He picked up a stray bowling ball from the floor and slipped it into her hands, standing up and guiding her wobbling step to the foot of the alley. Vivian’s bloodshot eyes blinked heavily behind her water-spotted glasses, but she could not stop the pins from swirling in her vision. She stood with the ball held in two limp arms for a long, swaying moment.

  “Are you all right?” Erik asked.

  Vivian blinked numbly.

  “I’m just waiting for the kaleidoscope to stop turning.”

  “Come on, now, you can do it, Viv,” Erik smiled. “Here, I’ll coach you through it.”

  Through her disorientation, Vivian suddenly felt a creeping warmth sliding over her cold, pale skin. She looked to her right to find Erik holding her gently oscillating body with four steadying hands. One of his rodent paws rested on the small of her back, the other on her sloshing belly. His left human hand tenderly directed her soggy wings away from him as he leaned in and took her right hand in his own. Together they lifted the heavy ball to her chest, and he pressed his cheek against hers as they stared over the ball and toward its ten targets.

&n
bsp; “Just keep your eye on the pins, swing straight, and follow through,” he coached. As he spoke, he slowly guided Vivian’s hand backward and forward, practicing the swing with a sloppy sort of coordination. Although they both stumbled with a drunken giggle, somehow their bodies seemed better balanced together than they had been on their own. As their arms swung in a pendulum, the peripheral world seemed to slip away, leaving nothing in Vivian’s clouded mind but the warmth and stability of Erik’s hands. In this moment of clarity, the pins seemed to stop dancing in her vision and line up for the beating that they knew they had coming.

  “You ready?” Erik said.

  “I am,” Vivian nodded.

  Erik’s hands slipped from her body, but before he stepped back he took her face in his human hands, tipped her head forward, and gave her a tiny kiss on the forehead.

  “For luck,” he smiled.

  Vivian blushed as Erik released her and stepped away. Her eyes narrowed in concentration as she took two steps forward, drew her arm back, and swung it forward in an arc of perfect grace. The ball hit the boards with the tiniest knock, sliding at a picturesque angle all the way to the end of the lane. Although beautifully thrown, the ball barely managed to pick off the solitary ten pin before dropping loudly into the end of the gutter.

  “I did it!” Vivian cheered. “I did it! I hit one!” She jumped up and down in excitement, nearly pounding the consciousness out of her own sloshed head. Erik rushed forward and grabbed her in a four-armed embrace.

  “You’re awesome!” he laughed. “I knew you could do it!”

  “I couldn’t have done it without you, coach,” Vivian smiled.

  “Alright, alright, break it up, you two,” Trent said irritably. “Y’all didn’t win yet. My girl still has one more chance to school your lame asses.”

  Vivian and Erik exchanged a twinkling glance as they separated and returned to their seats. Trent stuffed a neon-pink ball into Sherri’s hands and gave her a slap on her firm backside.

  “Hey, watch it, dickbag,” she growled.

  “You can do this, girl,” he grinned. “You just need a little coaching from Pro T.”

  “Fuck off,” Sherri spat. “I don’t need any help from you.” She stepped up onto the lane and held the ball before her narrowed pink eyes. The nine remaining pins seemed to echo outward in an infinite picket fence of white and red, but many years of drunk driving experience gave her the clarity to know what was real and what was illusion. She targeted the headpin and hurled her arm backward in anticipation of her pitch.

  “That’s right, girl. Slow and uungh! ”

  Before Sherri could complete her swing, the ball came to an abrupt, cushioned stop behind her. Her unbalanced feet pivoted on the wooden floor, turning her all the way around to see Trent doubled over with the hot-pink bowling ball buried in his groin.

  “You screwed up my swing!” Sherri snapped. “What the hell are you doing?!”

  “Just … coaching …” Trent gasped.

  He stumbled forward and grabbed Sherri clumsily by her shoulders.

  “Trent, what the fuck?!” Sherri demanded, struggling. “Get off!”

  “For … luck!” he wheezed.

  He grabbed the sides of Sherri’s matted head and leaned in to deposit a kiss on her tanned forehead. Sherri dropped her ball and took a lurching step backward as his stench burned her nose.

  “Shit no! Hey! Get off of me, you shitbomb!”

  She pounded her petite hands into Trent’s broad chest, but his two clenched fistfuls of her knotty blond hair held her firmly anchored in his grasp. As his stubbly lips connected with her smooth forehead, Sherri planted her palms on his chest and shoved herself away from him with a tearing rip of uprooted hair!

  “Owwww! Jesus H. FuckGillicuddy!”

  Sherri took two reeling steps backward as she slapped her hands to the sides of her stinging scalp. Trent looked at his own hands in shock. Two massive clumps of blond hair clung to his sweaty fingers, but he hardly noticed them. All he saw was the blood. The crumbling streaks of dry, dirty blood.

  “I’m sorry, girl! I’m so sorry!” he choked. “Damn, girl! I was just tryin’ to give y’all some luck! You didn’t have to get all hostile!”

  “Owww, shit fuck motherfucker,” Sherri seethed. “You tore open my scabs, you shitbasket!”

  As she furiously raked the hair away from her reopened head wounds, Sherri felt the strangest sensation. It didn’t hurt, but it felt indescribably like a paper cut happening inside-out, all around her scalp. She fell silent as her trembling fingertips bumped up against what felt like the bottom of a wide-brimmed beach hat.

  “What … what the hell is that?” she stammered.

  The others didn’t answer. They simply stared in disbelief. Sherri’s eyes darted across them with an increasing uneasiness as the edges of their mouths began to curl into conspiratorial smiles.

  “Holy shit, I just mutated, didn’t I?” she gasped. “What is it?! What did I get?!” Vivian opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a barely squelched giggle, which Erik and Trent were soon echoing. Sherri burned with fury at their mute amusement.

  “Alright, you assholes! What is it?! What’s so funny?!”

  She wiped her palm across the dusty chrome of the ball return and looked into its mirrored surface. A look of unadulterated horror slowly spread across her face.

  “Oh no. Shit no. No no no,” she chattered. “Why?! Why me?! Why me?! ” Her voice trailed into a desperate kind of whimper she gently ran her fingers around the soft edges of two butterfly wings the size of dinner plates that had blossomed from the sides of her head. The delicate wings were colored in a palette of pastel blues and yellows so resplendent with spring cheer that one could imagine the Easter Bunny choosing them to redecorate his bathroom.

  “What the fuck?!” she shouted. “How come you guys all turned into something out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting and I turned into a fucking Lisa Frank?!” She furiously grabbed the frilly wings in her fists, crumpling them like two old magazines. The second they began to bend, she squealed sharply and released them, pressing her palms over her eyelids and rubbing out a phantom pain that she had inadvertently crushed into them.

  “Ow! God damn it!” she yelped.

  She stretched out her face and gave her eyes two exaggerated blinks, like someone putting in a pair of contact lenses for the first time. As her eyes opened and closed, her wings moved up and down in a sweet little flutter.

  “Oh, that is so messed up,” she muttered disgustedly. “Why butterfly wings? Why me?”

  “Seriously, what gives, yo?” Trent asked. “Girlfriend didn’t get bit up by no giant butterfly!”

  “It was Priscilla,” Erik reasoned. “She must have passed her infected DNA on to Sherri when she pinched her!”

  “Priscilla’s DNA?” Sherri spat. “That bitch was a hard-ass monster! She didn’t have Shirley Temple’s DNA!”

  “No, it makes sense,” Erik said, scratching his scruffy beard thoughtfully. “You saw the crazy way she mutated. Every bug in that zoo must have taken a stab at her while she was trapped in there. Her bloodstream probably carried more kinds of bug juice than the bottom of an exterminator’s shoe!”

  Sherri shook her head in furious denial.

  “That is so unfair!” she cried. “That freak drools a jawful of killer bug slobber all over me, and I grow this shit?! Why?! Why not claws?! Why not stingers?!”

  “I don’t know! It’s not like I’m not an expert on this!” Erik squeaked defensively.

  “What do you think, Vivian?”

  Everyone’s eyes turned to Vivian’s conspicuously silent form slouched upon the bench. She raised her heavy eyes and looked at the absurd mutation with a shallow, disbelieving shake of her head.

  “I think I need another drink.”

  The world seemed to slowly blur past Vivian’s boozed-up eyes as she knelt down behind the bar and pulled the last warm beer from the last sliced-open crate. She stood up a
nd turned toward the door but bumped into a wall of arms and hair.

  “Ack! Oh. Erik,” she blushed. “What are you doing back here?” Erik held the score sheet in his two rodent hands and pointed to Sherri’s tenth frame with his bony index finger.

  “Ol’ gutter mouth just threw her last gutter ball,” he smiled. “We won!”

  “With just one pin?” Vivian laughed.

  “Hey, what can I say?” Erik nodded. “We make an unbeatable team. I’m entering this massacre into the hall of fame for future generations to marvel over.” He reached across Vivian’s body in the cramped space and used all four hands to slap the score sheet onto the fridge and affix its corners with Grocery911 magnets. Vivian leaned languidly on her elbow against the icebox door and squinted at the single-digit victory.

  “That’s a pretty pathetic score we racked up,” she said.

  “Yeah, but at least we had fun,” Erik shrugged. “After all, there’s more important things in life than scoring.”

  Vivian’s eyes rolled in a slow, coy arc to Erik’s face.

  “Even so, it’s nice to score when you have the right teammate.” With an uncoordinated step, she threw her arms around Erik’s bony shoulders and planted a wet, sloppy kiss on his surprised lips. Erik managed to catch her in his arms, but her reeling weight sent him stumbling backward, slapping his back against the wall. Vivian’s bare toes crunched against the plastic debris on the floor as she felt the warmth of Erik’s lips overcoming their surprise and returning her clumsy affection. Even as the exhilarating tingle of the moment danced through her drunken body, Vivian’s mind was distracted by the tug of a cable wrapped around her ankle.

  “I can’t believe this is actually happening,” Erik whispered. “Vivian, I … I … from the moment I met you I’ve wanted to take you in my arms and hold you against my-”

  “Laptop?”

  “Well, no,” Erik said shyly. “But I admit, this time it’s not just because I’m nervous.”

  Vivian bent down, untangled the length of phone cable from her leg, and held it up in front of her. The broken clamshell of the computer hung from the cord like a dead possum. She repeated the question with her eyebrows.