Coin-Operated Machines

by Alan Spencer

  Don’t get me wrong, I had a good time too. I was firing at the ceiling, and I laughed so hard when the plaster rained down on me, and Angel said I was the ghost of Christmas past. I used a 12 gauge to explode Mom’s old water bed. Then I’d start stacking up the romance paperbacks Mom left behind when she moved out. The collection was in the hundreds. We'd place the novels on random furniture and shoot them to pulpy pieces. Angel would ceremoniously read from the paperback tomes after she’d changed into a bed sheet, tying it into a toga. She’d read a paragraph out loud, the paragraph being a colorful description of a woman’s sexual organs. She’d prop the novel against something and let me take aim. “Oh profanity,” she kept saying like a Victorian housewife. “Oh posh, don’t talk about vaginas in this household. It’s rubbish. Pure foppery!” Then blammo from the shotgun.

  I probably forgot to mention we were blitzed out of our minds on cocaine the whole time. Angel had a thing about what surface she snorted from. It couldn’t be a mirror, it had to be off of somebody’s skin. That was her favorite way, off a lover’s back. And she had many lovers—and I had them too, a new one every night, it seemed. I’d wake up to a new pile under the sheets who’d collect their shit the next morning and leave as if none of it had happened.

  What haunts me the most is when I’d catch Angel being treated badly, and I wouldn't do anything about it. Back then, I didn’t give a shit about anything except being high. I had my supply, I knew where to get more, and I had money, connections, and Angel’s habits and the consequences were her own problem.

  I caught her once in the bathroom naked. The mansion was empty after another one of our infamous parties. She was sprawled out, using the shower curtain as a blanket, but she was naked. She’d shit herself, and she had a bloody nose. Who knows what event happened first, the shit or the bloody nose. The saddest part, I laughed at her. A grown man looking at his sister and laughing. I thought it was funny. A normal person would’ve cleaned her up, checked if she was alive—but not me. I cooked breakfast for myself like nothing had happened. I owe Angel a thousand apologies. I only want her to be safe, happy, and to be somebody in my life.

  Brock's wrist was cramping, so he forced himself to take a break. He was confused about how he was supposed to feel about cataloguing the misgiving of his life. He lowered into the couch he was resting on and closed his eyes. He had some time to take a nap before bingo night.

  CHARLIE BLACKWELL

  Three hours After Piedmont Cemetery Melted

  It was said of Charlie Blackwell that he had a few screws loose. That he had been abused by his father at a young age and turned violent by it in his later adulthood. That Charlie Blackwell misused prescription medications for his social anxiety. That Charlie Blackwell didn't care about his son who'd been taken away by child protective services due to questionable circumstances. That Charlie Blackwell would've strangled his ex-wife if Sheriff Reeds didn't step in and break it up. But what people couldn't accuse Charlie Blackwell of being today was unarmed.

  He sped about town in his jeep unloading rounds from the AK-47 he'd ordered through the mail from a friend of a friend who worked at a pawn shop outside of town. His current targets were those dozens of people who were rummaging through smashed storefronts in town square. A mini-van had crashed through the "Load and Go" Laundry mat. Deputy Hanson lit up the gas tank in his squad car and drove it through the front of the Golden Mercantile Bank of Blue Hills to watch it blow up. Shannon Wiley was taking a sledgehammer to the ATM in the drive-thru of the same bank. Cash flew in the air, the breeze carrying bills every which way as hordes of nearby people fought over them.

  Charlie picked off dozens of people during the rioting, the entire population of Blue Hills in a widespread panic. What they weren't counting on was Charlie Blackwell showing up to the party. He preferred headshots. It ended their lives quickly. One shot to the face, and that would be all. Killing them was the best thing he could do to ensure his own life.

  He spun the wheel, turning to head vehicle towards the bank to pick up the cash that was hemorrhaging from the tipped over ATM. Before he could turn around, a series of bullets struck him across the chest. Without his seat belt, Charlie's body tumbled from the seat as the Jeep kept driving straight into a tree. Seconds later, the Polson brothers were standing over Charlie's body. One shoved their hands into Charlie's pockets to take out his wallet, while the other brother forced open Charlie's mouth by stepping on his balls and used a pair of pinch clamps to rip out his tooth with the gold crown. By the time Polson brothers were finished robbing him, Charlie had bled to death.

  BINGO

  "B-10. B-10. One last time, B-10."

  Brock checked his Bingo card, and he came up short. Desperate for a victory, Brock whispered to Flo, the woman beside him at the table, to try and break her concentration. "Were you ever a waitress?"

  Flo sharpened her eyes and placed her chip over B-10. This was the best part of these competitions, in Brock's opinions, when the blue hairs responded to his chiding. Flo asked him deadpan, "Did you ever suck a dick for crack?"

  The comment was an inside joke between them. The women at the table had supported him post-rehab, and they joked hard at each other over time as their friendships increased.

  Brock had to counter Flo's quip. "Hey lady, you have home field advantage when it comes to dick sucking. You can take out your teeth. I still have mine."

  The old man at the front table named Ernest spun a metal cage by the handle, and like a lottery, he selected a numbered ping pong ball. "I-8. I-8. One last time, I-8."

  Brock eyed Flo's card, then Mary-Jo's, and then his own card. All he needed was an 0-7, and he'd win. Brock had to keep them distracted. Maybe they'd forget to put down a chip over a letter. "If you ask me, Ernest needs a bit of pep. It's like listening to King Tut in the tomb. Dust comes out of his mouth when he announces the numbers."

  Mary-Beth sipped from her apple juice and scowled at him. "You're going to have to do better than that, boy. Your jokes are lame."

  Flo laughed, "America sucks balls, and who's the biggest cocksucker?"

  Brock turned his head in Abigail's direction at the head of the table, whispering, "It's her. She sucks the biggest balls."

  Ernest announced N-2, and Abigail flipped out, spinning once around in her wheelchair. She put her hand up in the air. "BINGO! I have a bingo!"

  Brock flipped his card upside down. "Ah, I never win."

  "You won four weeks ago, remember?" Flo jabbed her finger into his arm. "You got that pug calendar."

  "Oh yeah. "Pugs In Wagons.""

  Mary-Jo eyed Gloria from across the table. "Gloria really wanted that pug calendar. She would've stuffed her old pug if her son hadn't cremated him first. The kid found the bug belly up on the carpet and he just took the body right to the vet clinic."

  Before Gloria could speak any further on subject, Ernest walked off the stage and held up the prize. What was a plug-in phone in the shape of a banana. Abigail pretended to talk into it, "Hey everyone, it's my son. He's calling me for the first time in two years."

  The blue hairs laughed, and Brock laughed with them. He remembered being out-of-work, needing friends, and finding a posted flyer outside the St. Anthony Community Center announcing bingo nights. It was a forty dollar a year membership fee, but it was well worth it. These ladies were his mothers and foul-mouthed sailors wrapped up in one package, but most importantly, they were sweet people. He couldn't get enough of them.

  Brock couldn't help but let it slip, "I wonder what she's going to do with that phone later."

  Flo snorted, "So that's why she's spinning in her chair."

  Ernest dug into the box trying to determine the next prize.

  "He's thinking really hard," Brock said aloud so everyone in the room could hear. "This is going to be good, isn't it, Ernest? They didn't go to the dollar store for this prize, no they didn't."

  Ernest ruffled his bushy feathery white eyebrows at him, saying in an eyeful, 'You're
going to set them off. Don't talk like that.'

  He dug deeper, dissuaded to pick what he first had in mind.

  "It better not be a scented candle."

  Ernest huffed this time, clutching an item and then releasing it again within the box.

  Brock had everybody clapping, whistling, cheering, and then chanting, "Pick something good!" "Pick something good!" "Pick something good!"

  Ernest shook his head in frustration. After working hard, he located something he was pleased with and raised it up. It was a box of expensive chocolates.

  "Decadent," Brock announced, putting his chips into a pile and slapping down a cleared card. He whispered to Flo, though he purposefully spoke loud enough for everyone to hear him. "My new lady friend would love those chocolates. I'd get some then, right ladies? You've been put to bed with chocolate before. Admit it. We all have. Even me."

  Flo, Abigail, Mary-Jo and the rest of the ladies gave him an interested stare, detecting juicy gossip ahead.

  Flo was the first to ask as Ernest called out the first letter and number for the next game, "Who is this girl?"

  "Hannah. And she asked me to marry her."

  He mentioned Hannah on a regular basis.

  "Oh Brock, it's about time. You've been shacking up with her. It's about time you stopped milking the cow for free."

  The game stopped in that moment, and Ernest called out numbers and letters to no avail. The women stared at him lovingly. Flo took his hand, smiling. "We're proud of you, Brock. We've been rooting for you the whole time. We don't care what the tabloids say about you. You've changed for the better. Marrying Hannah would be another one good move. She's quite a dish."

  "I'm nervous. I've never been married before."

  "Fifty-two years old and not married," Flo whistled. "How did that happen?"

  "It's hard to marry or develop romances when you're producing movies and working 24/7. And I was born into that environment. It sounds cheesy, but I didn't know anything beyond fast women." He listened to his words and cringed. "That sounded awful."

  "It is awful," Abigail said from across the table, "but I've been divorced three times, so what's worse?"

  "Two times," said Flo.

  "Three times," Mary-Jo chimed in.

  "Never," Ernest said, glowering at his wife, Edith, who offered him a conquering smile. "Not once."

  Brock looked at them all and was so grateful for each of them. He said one last thing before the game re-commenced. "Let's hope I get to be in "The Ernest Club." That would be "The Never Been Divorced Club.""

  BLUE HILLS MAYHEM

  Four Hours After Piedmont Cemetery Melted

  Gloria Albright had been postmaster general for ten years. She was now in the sorting room at the Blue Hills post office tearing open boxes and envelopes that were to be mailed. Her husband had tried to slit her throat in her sleep earlier this morning, but somehow, Gloria had instinctively defended herself. Kicking him in the balls, Gloria fled the house and didn't turn back. She ran for four blocks, dodging the houses on fire in her neighborhood, the random popping of gunshots, the murdered dead bodies strewn about on the ground, and the riots that kept spreading across the town of Blue Hills.

  Nowhere was safe, so when she caught sight of the post office, Gloria knew that was the best place to hide. Before she entered the building, Gloria heard the voices of the dead speak on the air. The smells of sulfur and death escaped from the earth in a yellowish fog, what were blasts of nasty air shoving up clods of grass and creating potholes in the streets and even cracking the foundations of homes. The pain between her shoulder blades, the need to survive, her surmounting fear, everything she was experiencing was slowly making sense.

  She locked the door to the post office behind her and delved into the pile of unopened mail. She soon came upon a birthday card. Gloria pocketed the twenty dollars and tossed the card aside. Encouraged by the take, she kept on working through the hundreds of packages and envelopes unknowing of the heavily armed people outside who were waiting for her to come out to ambush her.

  They were already here.

  Those two bitches are dead.

  Dr. Steinke clutched a scalpel in one hand and Mrs. Birchum's purse in the other. The purse was useless. His two nursing assistants had already pilfered items from each of Blue Hill's Hospice Center's patient rooms. So there was nothing for him here. He threw down the worthless purse and moved on, skulking about the hallway again. He had trouble finding Barbie Belle and Jill Olsen, the two nurses, through the thick walls of yellow air that kept thickening. He coughed on the smells of death, though here, they were laced with the exaggerated odor of bedpans, baby powder, and loneliness.

  Dr. Steinke entered another patient's room. He growled not in shock, but in anger, when he viewed the patient. Homer Winchell had his throat and wrists slit. He lay in a supine position on his bed. His wallet and bag of personal items was sorted through and left strewn about the floor.

  "Damn those bitches!"

  Homer's deep baritone voice played on the air as if it were being spoken from eight different mouths. "They're in room 109/kill those bitches/make them suffer/say it's for me/say it's for Homer Winchell you're dead/those bitches/those fucking greedy bitches/they play the game well/how well will you play the game, Dr. Steinke?"

  Exiting Homer's room, he entered a great cloud of yellow fog. He picked up his pace, searching for the nurses. The voices in the air increased. They teased, taunted, and encouraged him with every step he advanced up the hallway to room 109.

  He refused to die. Dr. Steinke wouldn't give up the battle for survival.

  I'll do anything to live that much longer. I'll even kill those two bitches. I want to kill them so much!

  Dr. Steinke charged into room 109. He caught Barbie Belle using a bone saw on Mrs. Allandale's ring finger to claim her wedding ring. The yellow fog was so thick in this room, he didn't have a chance to catch Jill Olson drag her scalpel across his ceratoid and jugular arteries. As Dr. Steinke gasped for his life on his knees, blood trickling heavily between his threaded fingers, Homer Winchell's voice played on the air. Homer was laughing at his death. Then hundreds of voices of the dead erupted, covering up Homer's laugher. They dead were collectively amused, especially when Dr. Steinke's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he expired.

  Jill and Barbie stepped over his corpse and continued on to the next room in search of more valuables.

  Those who weren't dead were in hiding, Sheriff Reeds gathered, as he drove cautiously about Blue Hills in his patrol car with his shotgun in one hand and the steering wheel in the other. Dead bodies were bleeding on the streets or left on their property shot up, stabbed, or beaten to death. The casualties added up to more than half the population of Blue Hills, but that left a lot of locals alive who'd fight for their lives tooth and nail. Whatever that meant, Sheriff Reeds would keep patrolling town and hope he too eventually found what he needed to survive another day. The ache between his shoulder blades when he woke up with this morning had died down to a dull ache, but the pain would return again soon. When it did return, he'd have to heed his body's demands. The only consolation Sheriff Reeds could give himself was that he had plenty of shotgun shells left to go around for anyone who crossed his path.

  He would do anything to live another day.

  BRANDY

  The Bingo game ended at eight-thirty on the dot. After talking to the ladies for fifteen minutes afterwards about "America's Got Flair" and Hannah, Brock was on his way to walking home when Hannah's car pulled up to the curb. Taken by surprise, he loaded himself in to the passenger seat, and eying his lady, he was impressed by Hannah's red skirt and tight-fitting white button up top. She drove the car two blocks before he asked, "So what do I owe the honor of being picked up? How long were you waiting out there?"

  "Ten minutes." Hannah half turned to him, a smile creeping across her lips. "Those ladies sure love you. I swear they were about to throw their Depends at you like you were Wayne Newton."r />
  "They were asking me about the TV show, and you."

  "You're their grandson."

  "I am."

  "No wonder you love going so much. You get showered with attention."

  "Who me? You're just jealous you didn't think of it first." He realized they were driving back near his apartment, but then she passed the turn off. "Wait, are we going to your apartment?"

  "Yes."

  The answer was too simple. It should've been a loaded response, and Brock knew he was in trouble.

  "Brandy's going to be there, isn't she?"

  Hannah had a way of staring off and pretending she hadn't heard him, and she was utilizing that ability right now.

  "So we're seeing your sister. Did you tell her you asked me to marry you?"

  She said softly, "She knows."

  "Do you want me to talk to her?"

  "Yes and no."

  "Yes and no, what does that mean?"

  "It means she wants to talk to you, and I'm going to have to let her, because if we're going to be married, Brandy says she needs to set a few things straight for the record."

  "For the record." Brock mulled it over. He caressed her leg, resting the flat side of his palm against her inner thigh. "I'll do anything for you, Hannah, even take verbal bitch slaps from your sister. They're deserved."

  She shook her head. "They're not deserved."

  "We have a troubled past together, so yes, I deserve some berating. I'm the bad boy who turned your life upside down."