A Tear in the Veil

by Patrick Loveland

The only way to not feel the way he does about himself is… to not feel. Anything. Ever again.

  You can keep your babbling, see-through weirdos and pregnant blob monsters and exquisite, freaky face beauties, UniverseTM. One day seeing what I’m sure is but a sample platter of what you’ve really got to offer and I’m through. This place is just a fucked up mess of pain, horror, selfishness, and bullshit. I’m cashing in. “Picture Me Rollin’” and “So it goes” and all that.

  Felix’s eyes roll over to the big pistol on the kitchen floor. He walks with his hands and picks it up, then rests back on his legs.

  It’s so heavy.

  Powerful things should be, I guess.

  ,’.;,’.;,’;’,;.,’.,;.’,;.’,;,’

  Felix raises it toward his mouth and inserts the hot barrel between his teeth. He looks down his face and considers the best angle to achieve instant brain death and adjusts accordingly.

  We wouldn’t want to experience some extended fever dream of diminished perception due to major brain damage, now would we?

  When he’s satisfied, he looks at Audrey’s body one more time to steel himself, then up at the ceiling before closing his eyes.

  Felix cocks the hammer slowly, feeling that razor blade sensation again.

  Hey, at least I’m not using one of those. That would suck.

  The darkness in his mind swirls and pulses.

  ,.’;„’.;,’.;,’.;,’.;,

  ,’.;,’.;,’.;,’.;,.,

  .,’.;,’.;,’.;,’.

  ,’.;,’.;,’.;,

  ,’.;,’.;’,;

  ,’.;,’.;,

  ,’.;,’.

  ‘,.;,

  .’,

  ,’–

  How do you say goodbye to yourself?

  Scratch that– who cares?

  Fuck. It.

  Felix’s left index finger curls a bit and he applies gentle pressure to the trigger–

  What is that damned sound?

  It’s like bugs flying into a zapper put through a chorus pedal and reversed.

  Felix’s eyes flutter open and roll languidly around in search of the source.

  How dare you interrupt this most sanctified of–

  Oh, come on…

  The sound is coming from the kitchen wall above the sink. More specifically, the brain matter Audrey unwillingly parted with a few moments earlier. Every little zapping sound corresponds with a small bit of it disappearing off the wall.

  Felix watches this for a moment before gingerly taking the gun out of his mouth. It’s still up by his head, just out of his mouth and a bit to the side and ready at a moment’s notice. He can’t look away from the popping and vanishing brain mush.

  That is, until Audrey’s body starts twitching again. Similar to the seizing undulations at first, then the back arches a bit and her muscles tighten. Then it arches again like when someone gets shocked with paddles in trauma room shows. The third spasm is so hard that the whole upper body is pushed upward and supported by the backs of Audrey’s palsy-clenched hands before slapping back down. The body is mostly still for a long moment.

  Then the hardest spasm hits and the whole body arches and twists up from the floor.

  A sound like a scream being pulled backward out of thick liquid rises quickly out of the near silence and organic struggling. The scream forms into a screeched word.

  “FFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-GCCK!” Audrey screams, vibrating the whole room, especially the oven and fridge coils.

  Felix flinches and the gun goes off again. His coffin nail bullet blows past his face and head, striking the kitchen wall, passing through at a ricochet-altered angle, and slamming into the neon and nixie “I love you” sign in the hall ceiling with a shower of sparks and an explosion of luminous gas. At least he held on to the gun this time.

  Audrey’s body jerks hard and her clenched hands slap repeatedly against the kitchen floor as the body violently convulses. She moans and mews like a tortured, injured animal. The hole in her head starts rhythmically seeping blood again and her recently dead eyes roll all around, trying to focus again. They finally lock onto Felix and life flows back into them, immediately followed by the pulsing shark black and crackling, warping distortions.

  Her speech is strained and affected by her rapidly reversing but extreme brain injury and that makes the shrill, vibrating screeching sound even more bizarre.

  Audrey says, “YOU MOTHER– F-FUG-CKER! NNNNHN– HUHN–HURTSS!” She swallows and breathes in and out like she’s trying to breathe through and past the pain. She moans in agony and writhes. The brain matter continues to leave the wall and Felix has to assume it’s reforming in her skull.

  The see-through prisms of flesh and blinding darkness calm down and she coos, “My head hurtss ssso bad. Feels ssso weird.”

  Still twitching and apparently not in full control of her movement, she rolls awkwardly onto her stomach and shoots her icy gaze toward Felix again, shimmering black pulsing in her pupils. The one eyelid is still half closed and one side of her lower lip droops. She presses her still partially clenched and hooked hands on the floor and rises up on her arms.

  “You ss-shot me… How cooth– couldth you do that?”

  Felix reflexively says, “I’m so sorry, baby,” like he forgot an anniversary. This is a little worse, but he doesn’t know what else to say.

  “I didn’t do anything to dessserve–” her skull reforms with a crunchy pop and she cringes, collapses on the floor, and her face goes slack while her eyes lazily dance around without focus for a moment. She shuts them tight and exhales hard before she rises back up on her arms and starts to slide across the bloody floor toward Felix.

  “Why didjhyou do that? I wasth going to eckss-plain it to you…” she says, her freaky face forming into a grimace of sadness and confusion which is recognizable even in the glowing, murky mess.

  Felix can’t help but feel incredibly guilty which is more confusing than anything before. He’s exponentially more confused than when he went to see Wahrheit for answers.

  As she inches closer on her hip, thigh, calves, and hands, Felix slides backwards on his hands and butt, still clutching the revolver. He backs up into the hallway and the wall stops his retreat. He winces as his right hand comes down onto some shards from the neon and nixie tubes.

  Audrey gets mad again watching him shrink away and jabs, “YOU SSSHOULD TRY THAT AGAIN WHEN WE BUH-BOTH HAVE GUNSSS… MORE SS-SPUH-NNNH-SSPORTING.” Her face breaks open and the luminous shadows whip around and through her head.

  “I didn’t m-mean to, Audrey.”

  “BULLSSHITT!”

  She slides and flops closer and makes it to his feet then calves. She leans over his thighs then inches forward and hovers over his chest, blood drizzling down from her rhythmically leaking wound. It’s just a trickle now.

  Felix’s face is burning from the radiant distortions. Terrified again and unable to think of any other way out of this, he tries to lift the gun toward his own head but she grabs it by the barrel and slams it to the hall floor.

  “A LOTT OF GNH-GOOHD THAT DIDDYOU LAS-SST TIME!”

  “No! I was–”

  “BE QUIET!”

  “Wh-what are you?”

  Audrey glares at him but the freaky subsides some. The leaking has stopped and eyes look almost normal again through the calming storm of weirdness that her face swirls in. Her lip tightens up some and her eyelid mostly recovers into its full upright position. She sways a little, though, and her balance and coordination still seem off.

  “‘What are you? What are you?’” Audrey mocks. “I’m not the one who just sshot their loving ssignificant other, I can tell you–” she cringes a little and closes her eyes, “nhn… that.”

  “I d-didn’t mean to,” Felix stutters, almost blinded by her proximity.

  She opens her eyes.

  “Don’t worry, Felickss. I’ve been through wors-se. I s-sstill love you.”

  She looks up at the shattered, sparking remains of the neon and
nixie sign and says, “Oh dammit, baby… Look what you didd to the ssign.”

  Felix looks past her at the wall where the brains and blood were. Almost clean now. Gotta make a move before she can follow.

  Audrey frowns, looks back down at Felix, and says, “It’ss unkind not to return the ssentiment when a girl professes-ss her love, Felix.” Her eyes dart back and forth in thought. They start pulsing stronger again. “Wait… thiss better not be about that TRAS-SHY GYP QUIM at the FISH STORE. I DON’T KNOW WHAT SS-SHE’S TOLD YOU BUT I CAN TREAT YOU BETTER THAN SHEE EVER COULD HAVE.”

  Felix furrows his brow and says, “S-Siobhán?”

  Oh, this could be bad.

  “YOU DO KNOW HER!”

  Shit! Throw her off-balance somehow!

  Felix yells, “Yeah, ‘cause she works at the fish store!”

  “DON’T RAISS-Z YOUR VOICSSE AT ME! YOU’RE THE ONE IN TROUBLE HERE! ‘SSSHIV-AWN’, HUH? SOUNDSS LIKE A FUCKING MICK LUXURY CAR! YOU THINK SHE’S PRETTY WITH ALL THOSE TATTOOS AND GYP TRIBAL GANGSTER BULLSSHIT AND FUCKED-UP HAIR? I’VE SEEN SOME OF THE PORNO YOU HIDE IN YOUR COMPUTER, FELICKS. I MEANn SsERIOUSLY… ‘SSOOU-ICIDE GIRLSs’? SSLUTTY FREAKSs.”

  Felix is speechless. Isidora accidentally caught him jerking it in his bedroom in high school and they just never spoke of it. The fear and confusion makes what Felix is feeling at this moment a much more bizarre, intense relative of shame and embarrassment.

  That mixed with this scorching nebula of madness calling someone else a freak would be comical if it weren’t so unsettling when it speaks.

  “YOU THINK SHE’SS PRETTY? YOU WANNA FUCK HER? YOU WANNA FUCK THE SsTREET TRASSH GYPSY HOOKER?! IF I THOUGHT YOU HAD, I WOULD CUT YOUR–” the storm calms dramatically and it’s more like the paisley fractal pulsing through her, “You… you haven’t, have you?”

  Felix stammers, “Wh-what?”

  “HAVE YOU FUCKED SSHIV-AWHN?!”

  “No!”

  “I DON’T BELIEVE YOU! YOU DID, DIDN’T YOU?! I BET YOU WENT DOWN ON HER AND EVERYTHING!”

  The burning radiance is so strong now that Felix can’t keep his eyes open.

  Do something!

  Felix tucks his left leg up toward his chest and Audrey looks down, puzzled. He tucks his right leg up the same way. Audrey’s face whips back up.

  “DON’T YOU DARE–”

  Felix uses all of his leg strength to kick Audrey off of him into the kitchen. He does it hard enough that she actually slides through what’s left of the blood on the kitchen floor and slams into the cupboard under the sink.

  He crawls into a crouched run toward the front door and hears a whirring sound and a thunk in the hall wall behind him. He glances back and sees the kitchen knife Audrey was dicing with stuck halfway into the hallway wall where he just was.

  “FELICKS, YOU PUSS-Y!” Audrey screams from the kitchen.

  He opens the front door and goes through it.

  “GET BACK H–”

  He slams the door behind him.

  It only takes a half a block for Felix to realize he is running with a loaded gun in his hand and he steps into a darkened doorway long enough to stow it in his camera bag, dancing in place out of fear that Audrey is behind him. Then he’s off again.

  He runs up Greenwich toward Coit Tower, thankful the cops haven’t shown up yet. Two gunshots… They’d have to come, right?

  He runs without a destination. He just runs. Pioneer Park at the base of the tower is almost empty as he books through it in the dark, half-expecting Audrey to pop out from behind a tree or drop from the sky and cut him in half with her eyes or something.

  Felix breathes hard and his muscles sting with acid as he runs for his life for the third or fourth time today. He decides to cut down the Filbert Steps, a long staircase of wooden and some concrete steps down the other side of Telegraph hill between the houses and flanked by bushes and trees. As he’s skipping down the gently creaking steps, a loud, shrill cry from behind and above him almost stops his heart and he spins, rolling his ankle. There’s another cry and another and it becomes a cacophony of maddening cackles as he gasps and falls over the wooden railing toward the dark, damp bushes.

  The distant part of him realizes it was just those “World Famous” wild parrots of Telegraph Hill and he’s about to chuckle in relief when his head connects with equal parts wooden fence base and dense-packed earth. Then it’s all deep, inky black and gentle, edgeless oblivion.

  Part 3

  23

  It’s cool enough out but the sun is peering between patchy, fluffy clouds and Sharkie is sweating badly from his trek and his current predicament. His muscles ache and his nose is running. His tracks itch and everything is pissing him off. The only thing that isn’t pissing him off is the thought of gankin’ that fool’s shit, sellin’ it, and scorin’ some pony. Cookin’ an’ slammin’, man. Need backup, though. He’s crazy I bet. Need a hit bad. Adrian prolly needs some shit too right now. I bet he’s pan handlin’ by Amoeba.

  The tourists and hipsters are out shopping and posing as Sharkie stumbles through the Haight-Masonic intersection in the Upper Haight area. Sharkie hates all these poser phonies. He spits on the sidewalk as he passes the Ben & Jerry’s at the corner of Haight and Ashbury.

  His black, patch-covered leather jacket is chafing but he wouldn’t dare take it off. His tight, charcoal grey jeans are riding up but he’ll suffer through it. His scraggly beard itches something awful and his sides and back under his currently limp Mohawk cut are growing back in from his recent trim and he’s got some in-grown hairs that ache and sting from the sweat. His hanging suspenders lightly connect with the backs of his legs on each lumbering step, which is annoying too. About the only thing comfortable right now are his combat boots. Once you break those in, they’re like velvet gloves. Velvet gloves that currently smell like dead, rotting squirrels in shit soup, but velvet gloves nonetheless.

  He’s a punk. Most people anywhere in the vicinity of the know would classify him in the “gutter” variety. A real punk, he says. He lives on the streets and doesn’t “give a fuck” about the government or wars or politics or hygiene. Especially hygiene. Sleepin’ out in the park and fleecing people for their change (and occasional small, expensive electronics if they leave them unattended in Flashbacks or Buffalo Exchange) is his big “fuck you” to the man.

  Oh, and his three bag a day skag habit. His gear is tucked in a part of the lining he cut open on the inside of the back of his jacket and it’s screaming to be used. Nothing says non-conformism and independence like relying on something someone else makes and sells at the expense of untold scores of other people for your very comfort and sanity.

  Sharkie’s real name is Hillary Warren Johnston the Fourth, originally from Wenatchee, WA. He was never too smart, but he did well enough in school before being convinced by videos on the internet at the wise, old age of fifteen that high school was only there to hold real thinking people down and keep them off the streets where real life happens. Real life is about running away, worrying everyone who loves you to death, and sleeping out like a badass. So that’s what he did, by gawd. He hitch-hiked to Seattle and started sleeping in a tent and smoking weed. When that got boring, he smoked some heroin with this girl under a bridge in the misty morning. He loved it. When that got boring, that “friend” taught him how to slam it. So kind of her.

  He learned how to pack his rucksack just right to fit the largest amount of socks (when he still wore those), grey pants, and black postpunk and deathrock shirts with cutoff sleeves of bands he’s mostly never actually listened to, never realizing that just sleeping outside, begging, and living out of a bag don’t make you cool and different on their own. Sometimes, they just make you a worthless, nasty parasite. No offense to honest, hard-working homeless people, Daoist sages, or anywhere-near-decent gutter punks of the world. Sharkie isn’t worth any of those labels.

  In summary, Sharkie is, himself, a phony poser and a crusty junkie idiot. At least he doesn’t have
a dog. Why do they all have dogs? Protection? A need to take care of something selfishly when they themselves are not guaranteed safety or nourishment? Probably both.

  And don’t get me started on fucking tweakers.

  Moving on, Sharkie is admiring a bright, new SHRYMP TYKLA tag up on a closed rolling metal store security door across the street as he passes Wasteland. Sharkie smiles through his sickness and pain at the colorful, layered letters. He is easily distracted by bright colors and secretly wishes gutter punks could wear them.

  He trudges on and makes it to Amoeba Music. Sharkie doesn’t see Adrian in front of Amoeba.

  Shit! Need some hot medicine, man…

  But he is sitting against the wall of the Whole Foods across the street near the bus stop with his on-and-off slut, Shasta.

  Shasta is fuckin’ crazy, man. Certified. She thinks weird, dark shit floats in the sky all around us. Sees glowin’ animals and shit. I wish Adrian would ditch her ass for good, even tight and cute as it is.

  Yeah, I fucked her once. She sucked me even. She’s real good and so is the goin’, but you can’t stick your dick in crazy too long or you might not get it back. Let alone knockin’ it up, yo. Fuck that business. People say pullin’ out doesn’t cut it but it works every time for me, man.

  Her cardboard sign reads, “Nasty, funky, hungry ho. Could ya spare a dime or so?” and it has one of them silly faces she always draws on it.

  Adrian has his hand on his terrier/pit Asphalt’s tummy and he rubs the dog once in a while as his eyes slide from tourist to tourist with that, “puh-please, sir/ma’am” look. Their hat looks mostly empty but they always just empty it whenever it looks like they’ve made out.

  Sharkie plods over and flops down next to Shasta. She looks over and makes a face at him. Whatever, bitch. You know I got you off. He tucks his legs in and sits cross-legged, rocking back and forth a bit in nervous anticipation. He leans over, looks past Shasta, and says, “Hey, Adrian. Wanna gank some fool for a payday?”

  Without stopping his “puh-please” face routine, Adrian asks, “How big?”