by Stanley Gray
He heard the coffee pot dinging. Looking at the shower, he pondered what he should do. Thinking felt like a chore. He idly wondered as he stood, swaying in the middle of the gross, tiny bathroom and its sallow light if he should even go forward with his plans. He didn’t feel like he could engage in a verbal sparring match with someone as smart and cunning as Aki Noro. Not in this condition.
For some reason, as he undressed, opting to wait for the coffee, a flashback struck him. Not long ago, he’d been trolling a truck stop parking lot. Looking for vulnerable people to kidnap.
Alan collapsed. He hit his head on the sink, and his vision blurred at the edges. His chest began to heave. It hurt to breathe. He groped frantically about, grabbing only empty air for a handhold. Lupine memories hamstrung him, knowing that their ambush had worked as planned.
Sobbing, his body febrile and aching from a night of fitful sleeping on the floor, Alan fought to stand. He leaned against the dirty off-white ceramic sink. He knocked over dust piles and some random bottles as he tried to grab the mouthwash. When he got it, he raised it to his lips, but his hands trembled so bad, the container dropped with a clink onto the floor.
Alan watched with horror as the greenish liquid seeped out of the plastic bottle right before his very eyes. It felt as if his life were fading away.
He blinked. He squeezed his eyes shut. Vague, incoherent noises stumbled out of his moving lips as he rocked back and forth, sobbing without tears. As he calmed down, he realized that, though the memories had been successful in their sortie, he remained alive. The cityscape of his soul was a smoking pile of ruins and desperation, but it still retained pockets of life.
The only thing he could do, he realized, was return. Return to a dark place, a place where he could bury memories in the dirty sandbox created in his parent’s sadistic experimental playground. All he could do to save himself, to protect the world form the monster he was becoming, was to pretend. He needed to forget.
As he sat on the cold floor, mewling and rocking still, though sporadically now, he willed the macabre memories away. He told them to flee to the outer reaches. The lives he had ended were refugees in his own war-torn brain.
The act, of consciously shedding these disturbing recollections, made him feel better. The relief and peace washed through him. He braced himself with one arm against the floor and stood. He wobbled for a second or two, but he smiled. He felt a certain sense of triumph, in that moment.
He turned. As he did so, he remembered vaguely that he wanted to take a shower. Alan realized he probably smelled like some vagrant who’d snuck into town after a free cross-country ride on a train. He turned on the water, inhaling the steam as it filled the cramped space. A large green spot surrounded the rusted metal drain at the bottom of the shower. Cracks creeped up one side of the ceramic. An old bar of soap, grimy and caked with sludge, a hair winding a sinuous path across its sloped top rested on a small rectangular holder that jutted from the mildewed wall.
Alan took all this in. He hesitated. He looked down at his feet. He didn’t want to get in. But, he felt he had no choice. He briefly flirted with the idea of returning home.
He remembered Xenobia, and stepped into the shower.
He jumped. He screeched.
The water laughed as it hectored his flesh. Coming out of the silver-ish head in a thin mist that spread out and beyond the flimsy clear curtain, the water hissed as it made its way downward. Alan shimmied around, trying to avoid having most of his body hit by the barrage of boiling liquid. Gradually, he acclimated himself to the heat. He put his back under the stream, feeling it attack the knots built up into his shoulders and neck.
Alan relaxed. He inhaled some of the steam, clearing his sinuses. It felt easier to breathe. As his mind was freed from the fetters of traumatic memories, he was able to focus more clearly on the tasks at hand. He tried to think of what he knew, and what he’d learned in a frantic night of searching and scrabbling online, about Aki Noro. A senior science and technology correspondent for CNN, the half-Korean man had been reporting for one of the nation’s preeminent news media for nearly two decades. Educated at Berkley, he’d gotten his first job at an ABC affiliate in Bozeman, Montana.
Stepping out of the filthy shower, he felt refreshed. He hummed to himself. He paused, but only for a brief second, as his eyes stole upon a small oblong slash of blood on the tile floor. It felt as if the past were there, eager to break through the barriers he’d erected. He shrugged and walked, naked, back through the building to his office, where he shut the door.
“I have a Bluetooth speaker around here somewhere.” he said, idly, to the walls. He searched around, moving books and piles of paper in a mindless scrabbling for the object. Alan felt the sudden need to play music. Really loud. Not normal music, either. Something blatant, extreme, something that would carry his adrenaline flow to the next level of greatness.
Sighing, he resigned. Realizing belatedly he still was without clothing, he returned to the bathroom, picking up his digs. He grimaced. He sniffed the wrinkled apparel. After a second ginger wafting, he felt generally reassured that his disheveled attire did not smell as bad as it looked.
He dressed in his office.
Pacing around, wishing he had more beer or alcohol, he went over his plans. They began to crystallize in his mind’s eye. The only hiccup, a real and major one, in the whole shindig was Noro. Everything here hinged on the man’s willingness and ability to provide full cooperation.
“Why? Why would he cooperate?” Alan asked himself, stopping mid-stride. The he nodded. He chuckled, the sort of smug laugh one issues when they’ve done something good and know it. “I think I’ve already been over this.” Alan said.
There was no one around to disagree with him.
Checking his watch, he saw that it was only 8. Dale wouldn’t be in for at least another hour, probably. Alan wondered if it were polite, to begin making calls this early. He peeked out the window, seeing that the sun shone brightly in the cerulean sea above. Cars and people moved in the courthouse parking lot across the street. A woman in a white dress with red and blue spots sauntered down the paved walkway, American flag fluttering above her under the gentle persuasive whispers of the morning breeze.
Alan sat down at his desk. He placed one hand on the bulky landline phone. His hand shook, slightly. He glared at it, trying to will away the fear, the nervousness. That swaying movement symbolized all that he hated about himself in that moment. Pulling it back, he brought the appendage to his mouth and bit down. Hard. The pain brought tears to his eyes, but he kept his jaw clenched. He bit down onto his own flesh until he tasted warm, saline blood flowing into his mouth. It dripped out and onto his chin. A few stray drops darted down and onto his shirt.
Without any segue, Alan returned his bleeding hand to the phone. This time, he picked it up. He called Aki Noro.
The phone rang several times. Alan moved his jaw and looked at the crimson stains he’d created in his madness. He felt vaguely aware that he was becoming…different. But he felt powerless to stop it. Whatever it was, it was there. A parasite, burrowing deep into the folds of his consciousness, permeating his being with its evil intent.
Aki didn’t pick up. Alan left a message. He kept his voice level, calm. He sounded professional to his own ears. “Hi, Aki. My name is Alan Grunke. I am the Special Agent -in-Charge of the Klamath Falls NASA Office of the Inspector General, and I’d like to meet with you today. My number is…” Alan covered the mouthpiece and swore. He looked around, eyes darting frantically until he stumbled upon the number. He recited it. “Please call me as soon as you receive this message, as this is an urgent matter. It relates to the Sandy pines crash investigation, which I am still the lead on. Our office has jurisdiction at the moment. Thank you, and have a great afternoon.” Alan said.
He hung up. He stared at the phone for several minutes in contemplative silence. He couldn’t help but think that the other man had deliberately avoided his call. But, why? A s
inister intent? Did he know something? Was he trying to hide something?
Alan called the number again. Noro again did not pick up.
Alan threw the phone across the room. He laughed and cried at the same time as he hurled the worst curses he could imaging in the heat of the moment at the phone. He stomped around. Then he sat down again and tried calling for a third time.
This time, he got through. He definitely was not expecting that, and he had to pause for several moments to try and collect himself.
“Hello? Hellooo?” Aki Noro said.
“Um, Hi. Hi. My name is,”
“Yeah. I got your message. Hey, man, you don’t have to be that persistent. Especially so early. I get it. I was going to call you. I just woke up, okay?” Noro said.
Alan looked at his watch. He wanted to say something, but miraculously kept his mouth shut.
“Let’s meet…say, 2 o’ clock?” Noro said, without waiting for any response or apology from Alan.
All Alan could do was mutter that this was okay before hanging up.
Chapter 18
He tried to sneak in.
It didn’t work.
How could he ever expect a telepathic alien to not notice his presence? It fed off of it. It fed off of destroying him.
Xenobia stood in the kitchen, holding a knife. She seemed to glare at him.
The pain. It came again, in a brilliant white flash. It felt as if a thousand yellow jackets had suddenly emerged from their hidden hole in the ground to simultaneously sting him. He reached up to cover his ears. He slowly fell to his knees. He pleaded for mercy, though he only managed to sob and mutter incoherently.
She allowed this one to linger. Just as Alan felt himself becoming somewhat desensitized, just as shock seemed to be setting in, just when the pain felt as if it could not possible ever become more excruciating, a new pulse of horrendous agony washed through him. Alan urinated on himself. He shit his pants.
Curled into a ball on the floor, assuming the infamous fetal position, he was utterly helpless.
All of the last few days’ efforts were coming to a head, and he lost all semblance of confidence he had gathered through his exercise of compartmentalization. Even his genius parents, with all their horrible human experiments on their own child, even they could not prove a worthy adversary to the alien intelligence and power of Xenobia. She was a small, semi-translucent blue glob, but she possessed the skills to take and do anything, anyone she wanted.
She walked away. She left him in his puddle of grasping madness.
Alan stayed there like that, soaking in his own piss and excrement, for some time. He kept waiting for the pain to return. He wanted to escape, but couldn’t.
He quivered when he saw her. She stood over him. As she did so, she seemed to metamorphose into something a thousand times larger than reality. She seemed to become Satan incarnate in that moment. Alan could only move his lips and mewl as he groveled at the alien’s feet, incoherently pleading for mercy. He would do anything for this to end.
[Where have you been, Alan?]
“I…” Alan’s voice cracked. His mouth felt dry. He had a hard time formulating words. So many thoughts raced through his befuddled brain.
“I have a job.” Alan said, finally.
[Yes. And do you know what that job is?] Xenobia asked.
“Whhh…what?” Alan asked. He thought he knew what he’d been talking about. He had a job. Just like everyone else. Sure, that job was supposed to be investigating Xenobia, or at least her crashed craft. But…
In that moment, he felt a sick and abiding hatred. For Xenobia, and all extraterrestrials. He began to laugh. He realized that Xenobia’s craft had crashed. Somehow, in all this time, it had never occurred to him that her presence here was a result of her weakness. Even if she could overpower him, a coward, she still could be defeated. She’d crashed, after all.
[Alan,] Xenobia got down eye-level with him. He slammed his eyes shut to avoid looking into those ugly, apathetic black orbs. [Alan, open your eyes or I will hurt you again.]
Alan complied. His entire body shook. [Alan, I meant to crash here. That crash was not a sign of my weakness. I crashed here, not far from your home, because I wanted to find you. Do you remember your puppy, Alan? The experiments your parents did?]
Alan tried to shut his eyes, but felt them opened for him by a force outside himself. He cried.
[Alan, I told you. I told you what my people do here. We study human deviation and depravity. It is nice to know the limits of our enemies. It is nice to know what our enemy’s soldiers, such as…cops, can do. We chose you.]
Xenobia got up. She began to pace. [Alan, I have something to tell you, and I hate it.] She suddenly was face-to-face with him again. Alan shrank back. His heart felt as if it would explode. [I actually have a lot to tell you. Did you know the people you kidnapped were on the news?]
Alan blacked out.
When he woke up, he was sitting at the table in the kitchen, a cold rag on his head. Xenobia was there beside him. She smelled…odd. He recalled the inciting incident that had given rise to his collapse into unconsciousness. Xenobia had informed him that…
He wanted to run. The urge to flee felt obscenely close, and he actually turned, slightly, to look towards the door. He knew he could not do it. Even if he could summon the courage to take two steps, the beast beside him would prevent any further movements. She had him.
He tried to think. In the blur that comprised the span just after the murder and crime spree, Alan had almost forgotten. He didn’t have time to watch the news, monitor social media, or do anything to look up these things. Fear and nervousness were his only enemies, or so he’d thought. Alan felt insulated, protected by the veneer of authority his office provided.
[Alan, I’m pregnant.]
The words were a blunderbuss.
His ears ring and he felt as if he would fall. He felt her cold, clammy hand on him, and he wanted to resist, to draw back from her corrupting and nefarious touch, but could not. Alan laid his head down on his arms and wept.
Of all the things, this ambush seemed the most cruel. Here he was, reeling from the shock that he might be one step closer to being exposed for the cretin he was. He’d been reduced to murder. He’d been emasculated, torn apart and recreated in the vile image of this creature, and now…
The silence that sat between them felt heavy and tainted. It stretched like some lithe feline as it woke up from an afternoon snooze in a ray of sunshine.
Finally, the only one that could shatter the quiet did so. [You need to go clean the basement, Alan. You have to go out again tonight. I’m too weak. I’m the mother of your child. You must do the act this time.]
Alan looked up. His bloodshot eyes no longer held any trace of humanity. “By ‘the act,’ I’m assuming you mean I have to kill them this time.”
[Yes. I am sorry.]
Alan chuckled. “You’re not fucking sorry. You don’t have the capacity to feel sorry.”
He got up and walked towards the basement.
The stench hit him as soon as he opened the door.
He stood there, at the top of the rickety wooden stairs, trying to fight off the tsunami wave of revulsion that attacked him. He leaned against the door jamb.
Retreating back into the kitchen, under the watchful gaze of this alien being, Alan scrabbled through drawer after drawer, throwing items aside and onto the floor in his frantic search for something to dilute the awful smell. The senescent putrescene emanating from that dark and musty subterranean room was a powerful advocate for evil. It seemed to permeate him with its nefarious life force.
Alan grunted. He found a bottle of Vick’s Vapo-Rub. Twisting the dark blue cap off with a jerky motion, he flung his finger into the clear goop. Running a trail of the aromatic and gelatinous mass under his nose with one finger, he decided to go even further. He inserted a fat glob into each nostril. Who needs to breathe?
Then, steeling himself, he descended.
He harnessed his gifts. The gifts his parents had cultivated long ago. He shut off a part of his brain, and began working. He picked up the shredded limbs of the man. A long, jagged bone jutted from a hunk of meat, probably the former pimp’s leg. It gleamed an ivory white in the sallow light offered by the single bulb above.
A box of trash bags sat in the corner, under a large spider web. Alan retired it, and began depositing parts into bags. He lost count at 27.
His actions became a blur. He performed tasks from rote, turning himself into an automaton to protect himself from the inimical hurricane of emotions.
One by one, he carried the bags up into the living room. Once they formed a large pile there, he began moving them to his car.
What once were two flawed humans trying their best to navigate the turbid waters of life now resided in multiple plastic bags obtained from a dollar store. They would be scattered in various wetlands and wooded areas, for scavengers and insects to feast on.
Chapter 19
He kind of wanted to get caught.
Alan didn’t plan this one out. He allows his impulses to dominate him. His bug brain dictated the chain of events as they unfolded before him.
Was he an active participant? Alan couldn’t give a definitive answer, as he sped along the winding highway towards Eugene. Home of the Ducks.