A Tear in the Veil

by Patrick Loveland

  Grieves scans the area and sees Felix through the cab window. He smiles big again.

  Dammit!

  Grieves stands and takes a few steps down the street before stopping and frowning. He descends into the street out of sight.

  Finally!

  Felix sighs hard and slumps down on the seat, exhausted.

  “Where we goin’?” asks the cab driver.

  Felix answers, “Six forty-two Greenwich.”

  “Green witch it is,” he says and chuckles to himself.

  The cabby drives quick and smooth and Felix doesn’t care how long around he goes.

  The back of the driver’s head is covered in glowing flowers like those on the woman in the BART car. The translucent, bee-sized creatures flutter into them and crawl on them.

  The driver says, “Hey, uh… you like girls, man?”

  “Yeah, why?” Felix says and furrows his brow.

  “I know some who’d like you.”

  “I’m cool, thanks.”

  The driver looks back at Felix through his rear-view mirror.

  “Clean pussies, man. Mouths and asses for only a little more. Safe. Hell, guys too if you prefer. Options are fun, am I right?”

  “No. Thanks, but no.”

  Felix feels the hum before he hears it, coming from the bench seat next to him. The top half of Grieves’s head comes up out of the seat and his big eyes look around then fix on Felix. He rises up out of the seat and sits then crosses one leg over the other in a casual manor that makes it weirder. Grieves leans over and stares straight at Felix’s face until Felix looks forward.

  The taxi driver notices Felix looks upset.

  “Hey, man. It’s cool. Just tryin’ to spread the joy around, y’know? Spread…” he says, chuckling at his own word usage.

  Felix says, “It’s c-cool. Had a…” he looks at Grieves then forward again, “…long day.”

  “I gotcha.”

  Without looking away from Felix’s face, Grieves reaches over and plucks a few of the bee-things from a glowing flower on the back of the cab driver’s head and puts them in his mouth. As he chews them up, the crunching and bursting is visible through his lips and cheeks and even a bit through his somewhat see-through teeth. Grieves swallows the little mushed up creatures and Felix looks away, not thrilled about watching the involuntary muscles work the food from the pharynx down his esophagus.

  Felix doesn’t know if he can take much more. He watches out the windows, ignoring Grieves incessant mumbling and whispering. As far as Felix can understand it, he’s participating in a macabre game of hide and seek that might just never end.

  I might have preferred to be gutted by that big, nasty muckman in Colma by the end of this.

  Is Grieves a symptom?

  Am I Crazy?

  The question stands…

  But on the off chance I’m not, what can I do?

  Light glints off a passing car’s windshield and Felix squints then notices a girl walking on the sidewalk with a satchel slung over her shoulder.

  Wahrheit’s emergency kit. Whatever’s inside that pack… that’s what I need.

  Felix bides his time thinking about what might be in it until he sees they are pulling onto his block. The cab pulls up and Felix gives the driver his fare and gets out.

  The driver starts, “You sure you don’t want some–” Felix shuts the door firmly and walks toward his steps. Behind him and muffled by the closed car window and door, he hears the driver say, “Fuck you then!” before the cab speeds off.

  Felix climbs his steps then stops at the door and looks back. Grieves is standing in the street where the cab was stopped, staring and mumbling. Felix unhooks his keys from his belt loop and opens the door. He steps in and closes the door behind and looks out through the high-set windows. Grieves just stands there and mumbles.

  Please stay out there…

  Felix turns around and creeps down the hallway.

  The “I love you Felix” sign glows in the hallway ceiling. It blinks on and off a few times and Audrey pokes her head out from inside the kitchen into the hallway and looks up at the flickering sign.

  In a playful, mocking tone, she says, “Uh-oh! It’s losing power! Maybe you should call when you’re gonna be–” she stops abruptly and sobers when she looks at Felix. She steps into the hallway, frowning and sizing him up.

  He realizes he must look awful. He’s covered in a few layers of dried sweat with a fresh one still beaded on his forehead and in his slick, messed up hair. His eyes must look half wild and he has a few little tears in his clothing. There are also mud stains on his pant knees and… well, there’s the blood from Wahrheit’s and the Macy’s restroom… but, can Audrey see that? Somehow it hadn’t occurred to Felix that Audrey might be able to “see” too.

  Felix notices tiny pinpricks of shark black pulsing in the centers of her pupils.

  “Are you okay, Felix? You smell like…” she asks, upset by his disheveled, strange appearance but also genuinely concerned and… protective? “Fine– why?” he returns, too quickly.

  “You’re a mess and… and you look scared to death.”

  “Oh, I’m fine– I thought a mugger was following me. This guy was like pacing behind me on the sidewalk.”

  Audrey studies Felix carefully, eyes pulsing stronger now.

  “Are you taking your medicine, Felix?” she asks, barely above a whisper.

  “Yeah, why–”

  “DON’T FUCKING LIE TO ME!” she screams, the distortions and blinding dark pouring out of her eyes and destroying her face more intensely than he’s ever seen it.

  The “I love you Felix” sign distorts and flickers for real now, parts of her burning mess of a head and face whipping up into it. The different layers of wire fluctuate in color and jumble and warp together, making nonsense abstractions of the “A-u-d-r-ey” and “F-e-l-i-x” letters. The intense darkness around her makes the glowing sign even more intense and contrasted, but it’s almost obscured by the impossible brightness of the same.

  The distant part of Felix decides that the bright darkness thing is like if solarization were a real life occurrence and it got turned up to eleven.

  That still doesn’t cover it, but that’s the best he can do for now.

  “AM I GOING TO HAVE TO WATCH YOU TAKE YOUR MEDI- CINE?!”

  Felix says, “I’m taking the pills–”

  “I CAN’T TAKE YOUR WORD FOR THAT ANYMORE! IF YOU REALLY ARE, YOU NEED A HIGHER DOSE! IF YOU AREN’T, YOU NEED TO GO BACK TO THAT PLACE UNTIL YOU REALIZE YOU HAVE TO TAKE IT!”

  Felix blinks a few times, his face burning from that feeling like a blast of radiation. His face stings and tingles.

  Audrey storms back into the kitchen in a swirling huff of smoky distortion and the “I love you sign” mostly returns to normal. Felix follows slowly, watching the wire letters glow and vibrate and the neon tubes twinkle.

  “SOMETHING BETTER WORK BECAUSE I CAN’T TAKE THIS SHIT!” Then, quieter but still shrill and grating, “I AM NOT YOUR MOTHER.”

  Felix reaches the kitchen. He starts, “She was dead before he ever–”

  “YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!”

  No… you’ve got it wrong.

  Felix is really bothered by her misunderstanding of the worst events of his young life. He’s about to correct her when Grieves walks into the hallway through the front door.

  “Oh, sorry. I actually forgot about you for five seconds,” Felix says to himself. “Can you believe that?”

  Audrey says, “WHAT? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”

  “Nothing,” Felix replies. He walks back down the hallway and into his workroom. He picks up a pile of drawings that have accumulated on the case Wahrheit gave him and sets them aside. He realizes that he’s still holding his keys and he flips through them, finding the small case key.

  Grieves walks through the wall into the workroom and looks around at Felix’s drawings and paintings.

  “Pik-tchersz au-rre neat. Pick-chersareneatt
. I lai-kk themn.”

  Felix inserts the key into the corresponding slot and rotates it. He takes a deep breath and exhales.

  When he opens the case, there’s a split second where it’s just an empty case of charcoal grey foam with professional looking cutouts. He frowns and blinks and the cutouts are filled. He could swear he hears a little music box inside playing something like an eastern European folk tune. It sounds like it’s built into the case’s interior somewhere.

  What fills the cutouts twists Felix’s stomach. He doesn’t know what to make of it. The dread is back and bad.

  The case now contains a large revolver with a shrouded hammer. It’s been modified and customized but, due to Felix’s mild gun fetish and resulting casual research and magazine perusing, he knows exactly what is at its base. Felix finds momentary comfort in accessing his sizeable memory banks of unneeded trivia.

  It’s a full-size Mayor self-defense pistol. It looks kind of like an old .38 special if those were larger and the cylinder and frame around it were twice as long. That length and larger size accommodate its special qualities: It can fire .45 long Colt, .45 ACP, and .410 rounds with the same cylinder. Those last ones are fuckin’ small shotgun rounds, dig? You can load as many variations of each at the same time for tactical or defense purposes. Six rounds total. Matte black. Scandium alloy frame. Stainless PVD cylinder. Dove-tailed tritium night sight. Crimson Trace laser grip. That’s a laser sight in the grip for precision, “in the heat of it” aiming without added weight or bulk.

  When Felix has to kill time at a magazine rack, he reads gun magazines. Maybe it was growing up on action, sci-fi, and horror movies where firearms were frequently the best defense against bad guys and/or creatures, but he got a bit of a gun fetish from it. Growing up in the US, that probably isn’t so uncommon. Living in San Francisco, California, Felix doesn’t talk about it much.

  The aftermarket on this one makes it even more special, though. This one has custom brass fittings, clear, pencil-thick glass tubing encased in brass protection cylinders with breaks for fluid visibility probably, and some other doodads here and there like the hammer shroud which are similar to the style and workmanship on Wahrheit’s Bergmann but as if by a less experienced amateur/imitator. Looks much newer too. There are even finely etched groupings of symbols and characters all over it in neat strips. Similar to the formulas or equations Wahrheit wrote on his… bullet paper.

  The other cutouts in the case hold ammo of all three types and different colored marking on the ammo makes a subset of different types of that ammo, Felix supposes.

  There are also other custom parts, ammo quick-loaders, and cleaning tools. What am I supposed to do with this?

  Felix picks it up with his left hand. There are neatly folded papers under it that might be instructions or something. It’s heavier than he is prepared for even accounting for the foreign experience factor. It feels real and solid and it occurs to him that he’s holding something made for killing.

  Grieves tears his attention away from the artwork to see what Felix is doing. He sees the gun and recoils, then takes a step toward Felix and bends over.

  Grieves whispers hoarsely, “Thossse a-rre dan-jurous! Thooo-se aredangerous!”

  “Think so?” Felix asks, then points the pistol at Grieves’s head and stands, letting the case fall off his lap onto the floor, scattering the contents.

  Felix keeps the pistol trained on Grieves as he yelps and throws himself back into the wall, seemingly terrified. Felix feels a surge of confidence from being able to scare the scary.

  Then he realizes what this new tool can get him.

  Answers.

  Felix takes a step toward the hallway but stops when he hears the music box in the gun case on the floor playing a different tune. The case and its remaining, spilled contents distort in space like the light goes out on only them and they become matte and abstracted from the room, then they blink out completely and are gone.

  He doesn’t really care what that’s about at the moment and he continues out of the workroom, down the hallway, and into the kitchen. He keeps the pistol behind his thigh for a moment, watching Audrey dice tomatoes with her back to him.

  She glances back over her shoulder and her face swirls and breaks apart but it’s not nearly as freaky as it was a couple minutes before. She’s calmed a bit but still upset.

  Audrey says, “WHY DON’T YOU TAKE YOUR CAMERA BAG AND JACKET OFF AND STAY A WHILE, FELIX?” then continues her dicing.

  Felix raises the gun and points it at her back. He cups the bottom of the pistol grip with his right hand like he’s seen in movies and magazines to give it stability. It makes a satisfying clicking sound of shifting machined metal.

  She looks back again then does a double take and spins around, dropping the knife on the kitchen floor with a clacking sound. She yelps and extends her other hand in front of her as if to block a coming attack.

  Her face twists and dances but it’s different now. She’s afraid and that looks more like pulsing, living fractals sizzling through her moving cutouts of see-through flesh, muscle, and bone. Her eyes are almost visible in the shark black and they glint, reflecting the kitchen light strangely. Her voice changes too. Still strange, but not as shrill or vibration distorted.

  “Felix! Wha–”

  “What are you?!” Felix demands, trying to mask his fear and desperation.

  “What do you mean?!”

  “What are you?! A vampire?! Some kind of ghost?! A fucking alien?! What?!”

  “I don’t understan–”

  “Quit acting! I can see what you are! I just don’t know what I’m seeing!”

  “Please put that down, baby! Please.”

  “Don’t call me that! Tell me what you are or I’ll shoot!”

  Audrey’s expression changes and she narrows her eyes at him and says, “No, you won’t.”

  “Shut up!”

  Felix cocks the hammer and feels his thumb slide between the thin brass shrouds and he thinks of razor blades.

  Wait, is this thing even loaded? I didn’t check! Don’t look at it– She’ll know you aren’t sure! Who knows what she’ll do then?!

  Audrey looks scared again. Not like she’s new to being in this position, though, which unnerves Felix. He tries not to show it. She blinks a few times and her eyes dart around in thought. She closes her eyes and sighs.

  She opens them again and says, “Okay. I am… different, but I’m not any of those things, Felix. There’s a lot you don’t know. Put that down and I will explain it to you, baby.”

  “Quit calling me that! Explain it now!”

  She’s bothered by the gun for obvious reasons, but she also seems undeniably familiar with having one pointed at her and she is becoming more angry than scared. The anger distortions start to blossom slowly and her eyes go all shark black again as she speaks.

  She starts, “I’ll explain it when you,” her face erupts into a burning dark star of organic chaos as she continues, “PUT THE FUCKING GUN D–”

  Felix jerks in reflex and the gun goes off. The kick is so strong and the sound so loud that he drops the pistol out of shock and in a moment it’s going to make a heavy clunking sound as it connects with the kitchen floor. Before that can happen, a .45 long Colt round hits Audrey just above what would normally be her perfectly plucked left eyebrow, more out of shear proximity than any skill on Felix’s part.

  The distortions cut out instantly, her skull cracks, and a good portion of her brain comes out the back of her head, hitting the wall behind her above the sink.

  The pistol hits the floor as Audrey crumples back against the sink and her body goes limp, sliding down to the floor and ending up propped against the lower cupboard with her legs splayed out unnaturally. Her body undulates and twitches like she’s having a seizure. Her now normal eyes go blank and blood pulses out of the hole in her head in time with her last few heartbeats before it becomes just a slow, steady trickle. One of her eyes half closes and both of the
m stare down through the floor at an angle, hollow.

  You killed her.

  I didn’t mean to…

  She’s dead.

  But maybe–

  No, Felix…

  You.

  Killed.

  Her.

  Felix watches the blood trickling from the entry wound on Audrey’s very recently flawless forehead slow to a stop and the spasms and twitching subside. Audrey’s body is still. He hears the sound of the Flower intro screen music from down the hall in the living room.

  I hadn’t noticed that…

  Was she playing it because I like it so much? Did she set it up for me because she thought I might have had a hard day?

  He’s not sure if anything could make this worse, but that comes close. Felix loses his strength and his legs buckle. He collapses down without stopping himself and lands hard with his legs half tucked under him. He leans forward and props himself up with his arms, swaying a bit.

  Grieves’s face appears out of the upper kitchen cupboards and he says, “Tolld yew… I tould yooooo… danj–urous.”

  Felix ignores Grieves completely and he leaves after a few seconds.

  It’s hard to look at her… her body.

  She’s– She was so beautiful.

  Still is…

  You’re going to prison.

  ,.’,;.,’.;,’.;,’.;,’.,’.;,’.;,.’,;’,’.;,’.;,’

  ,’.;,.,.’,;,’.;,’.;,’.;,’.;,.,.’.;,’.;„’

  ,.’;,’.,;.’,;.„’,’.;,’.;„.’;,.’,’.;

  Or are you?

  Felix gets mad. This time, though, it’s at himself. He sways back and forth on his arms, hurting in ways he never has before. An enormous sob is caught in his chest but it won’t come. He is so lost and angry and twisted up inside that something switches off in his self and he reaches a state of profound clarity.