Low-Skilled Job (Vol. 1): Low-Skilled Job

by Keller, Roger

  “Just what are you saying?” she said, scary for just a second, then she laughed. “Fucker.”

  We were truly alone. No living thing, with any natural instincts worth a damn, was anywhere within miles of us. The living dead man in the trunk didn’t count. Heather was right, he probably never did.

  “I shot this guy in my dream,” I said.

  “Are you still talking about that?” She groaned. “Was your dream like, just so real?”

  “He looked exactly like this.” I opened the Sasquatch Trucker’s jacket and found an unopened pack of Marlboro Lights.

  “You didn’t shoot anybody,” she said.

  “Yeah, Marcello said those dreams were some kind of vision of a possible future,” I said.

  “So, did that fucker tell you what he wanted,” she said.

  I told Heather everything, including the stuff about the book.

  “That’s like, some crazy, fucked up, horror movie shit right there.” She stretched and growled.

  “I think it’s probably better if Marcello has the book, he doesn’t seem that bad,” I said. “But I’m not torturing anybody. I don’t know what were going to do about that.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.” Heather turned to me. “Why doesn’t he do this shit himself, if he’s so fuckin’ powerful.” She seemed unusually serious. “How much can we trust Marcello anyway? He didn’t tell you anything. What are we getting into?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sure we can trust an evil, immortal wizard.”

  Heather’s glowing eyes rolled in annoyance.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Whatever The Society of Ancient Wisdom, or whatever they’re called, can throw at us would be nothing compared to what Marcello could do. I think he sees the job as beneath him, as if he has better things to do. I never even asked when they stole the book. It might have been years ago for all I know, but something reminded him of the book and now he wants it back.”

  “He probably doesn’t even really care,” she said.

  “Well, what else are we going to do?” I said.

  “Well, we could finish the job we started for Lee,” she said.

  “Fuck.” I hadn’t even thought about the revenants in what seemed like days. “You think there’s still more of them?”

  “There’s always more,” she said.

  Heather played with her cross. Moonlight reflected off the gold. I remembered Marcello’s gift.

  “Here this is from Marcello,” I said. “He says it would protect you from being possessed.”

  Heather took the necklace. It didn’t burn her. She put it around her neck.

  “Do you think it’ll really work?” she said.

  “If it doesn’t work and you get possessed again, then we’ll just bring you back to Marcello,” I said.

  Heather shut the trunk. The noise echoed across the moonlit fields. My eyes had adjusted to the night by this point. I could see more detail. I climbed on the trunk and put my feet on the bumper.

  “I wonder how you see all this, you know, with your eyes?” I said.

  “It’s normally kinda greenish orange, but tonight it’s like daylight,” she said.

  I looked up at the moon just as it disappeared behind a cloud. Heather leapt up and landed next to me. I felt her arm around me. She rested her head on my shoulder.

  “I remember trick or treating on a night like this. I was, like twelve. My dad drove me and my friends around. He was on whatever meds the VA was giving him at the time, that and some cheap weed. He was real mellow. We kept trick or treating ‘till it was it was way late. All the houses turned their lights off and it got nice and creepy. The other girls got scared. So, dad took them home. But we kept driving, listening to the Halloween show on the radio. Everything was cool, for once.” She sighed and pressed her face against my arm. “I bet you had a lot of nights like that.”

  “Not really.” I smoothed her hair back. “Like I said, most of my good memories were on basic cable.”

  The living dead man in the trunk below us shifted. Heather rapped her claws on on the trunk and he quieted down.

  “What are we going to do?” I said. “I think were fucked.”

  “Not really,” Heather said, upbeat as ever. “Like, you were already fucked, with a boring dead end life. You’re already half dead anyway, with nothing to show for it. Your words, not mine. Just imagine how much it would have sucked to be working for ten dollars an hour when you’re seventy.”

  “You think I’ll live that long?” I said.

  “We’ll see.” She laughed and tapped the car.

  “We’re still going home, my home,” I said “I need stuff. I gotta figure this out. We need a plan.”

  “We should go to my place,” she said. “I have all kinds of weapons and shit.”

  “Sure, after I get some sleep in my own apartment,” I said.

  We lay back on the trunk and looked at the stars. I shut my eyes for a second.

  *****

  I woke up alone and shivering on the gravel road. A horn blared. My right arm shot up, middle finger extended. I heard a door slam.

  “Motherfucker, I gotta get to work. Y’all better go sleep it off somewhere else, or I’m gonna fuck you up,” a man, who was about ready to give in to all the rage in his life, said.

  I steadied myself on the Dodge’s rear bumper and stood up. A man waited by his jacked-up Chevy pick-up, with a baseball bat in his hand. He stopped cold when he got a good look at me.

  “Why didn’t you wake me up Heather?” I said.

  “Who, what the fuck are you talkin’ about?” he said.

  I looked around. I was still in the middle of the same country road that Heather had parked on the night before. A fresh trail led through the tall grass on the side of the road. A mound of black earth waited at the end, with nothing to mark the grave of the Sasquatch Trucker.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I got lost. Give me a second. I’ll be out of your way.”

  He held up an empty right hand, but kept the bat ready in his left.

  “OK, man.” He climbed back into his mud covered truck.

  “You doin’ alright in there?” I tapped the trunk lid. Heather growled.

  *****

  I drove back home without stopping, more tired than the night before. The sun irritated me. It wasn’t until I parked in front of my building that I realized I hadn’t stopped at the liquor store.

  “Fuck.” I hammered the steering wheel a few times and screamed. I didn’t care who heard. All I had wanted to do was fall asleep with a drink in my hand.

  Ron and his pathetic crew were loitering around the security door. I grabbed my gear, slammed the door twice then headed right at them, too fast for them to realize they needed to get out of my way.

  “Disappear you little shits,” I said.

  They slunk away, watching me warily the whole way.

  “Not you.” I grabbed the back of Ron’s shirt before he could escape.

  “Get the fuck offa me,” he said.

  “What’d you tell those punks?” He wriggled like a bag full of cats. “You tell them anything more about me?”

  “No, man. I swear,” he said.

  I couldn’t tell if he was more scared of me or the threat of Heather, waiting somewhere for nightfall.

  “Shit, man,” he said, almost whining. “What do you want from me?”

  “You got weed?” I said.

  “What the fuck?” He started laughing.

  Ron saw part of the AK sticking out of my gear bag as we climbed the stairs to my apartment.

  “Whoa, man,” he said. “I ain’t sayin’ shit.”

  “About what?” I said.

  “Oh, right,” he said.

  He managed a nervous laugh. I fumbled with my keys. At some point, Heather had installed a new door handle, in violation of my lease of course.

  “Wow, your place looks pretty fucked up,” Ron said.

  “Yeah, you should have some ide
a as to why.” I threw my gear bag on the now wood covered floor.

  “Where is she?” He looked around the room, tapping the stainless steel pocket clip of his knife. It was a cheaper, Chinese version of my knife.

  I ignored the question.

  “Sit the fuck down,” I said.

  I debated just how much to tell him. I knew no one would believe a high school kid, especially if he started going on about vampires.

  Ron laid his paraphernalia out on my foot locker, table. He opened a baggie. The smell hit me a second later.

  “You got better shit than I did when I was your age,” I said.

  “Back in the Seventies, right?” he said. “I thought they had weird shit from Vietnam back then.”

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that,” I said. “I ain’t that fuckin’ old.”

  “Sorry.” He kept looking at the paneled over, deck door. “Does she come back when the sun sets?”

  “She’s already here,” I said. The kid fumbled his pipe. “She’s sleeping in my trunk.”

  “So, she’s locked in?” he said.

  “A trunk lock ain’t gonna stop her,” I said.

  “Fuck.” He tried to pack the pipe, his fingers trembling. “So what are you, like her guardian or something?”

  “No, I’m, apparently a vampire hunter,” I said.

  “No shit,” he said. “Then why are you and her-”

  “Gimme that.” I took the pipe. “It’s complicated.”

  “Did she kill Ray?” He said. “You know my Dad’s friend? The one they found by the dumpster. I heard the body was totally drained of blood.”

  “What do you think?” I took a toke and passed the pipe back to him.

  “Fuck,” he said. “That guy was a dick anyway.”

  At some point I drug myself off the couch and found a dusty DVD case. I swayed on my feet, thumbing through the collection of bootlegs I’d burned years earlier, then never watched again. I put City of the Living Dead on. Ron was too faded to notice that the sun was finally gone.

  “This is a fuckin’ weird movie, man.” Ron laughed hysterically.

  “I saw this at a drive-in once,” Heather said.

  She was perched on the back of the couch between us, like a hawk on a telephone pole. Ron looked up and froze.

  “How’d you get up there?” I said, confused and pleasantly wasted. “How’d you get behind me, babe?”

  “You guys are so baked,” she said, trying not to laugh. “I didn’t want to harsh your buzz.”

  “Wow man, I’m gonna fuckin’ die,” Ron said. “Fuck it. I’m goin’ out high. I ain’t gonna feel shit when she kills me.”

  Ron lit up. Heather hopped down and hit the floor facing us, somehow.

  “Get up.” She grabbed Ron by his baggy t-shirt. “Guests can sit on the recliner.” She guided him to his new seat and handed him the pipe. “Keep smokin’, burnout.”

  “What are you doin’ Heather?” I tried to sit up. “Aw, come on. Don’t kill him.”

  Heather reached into her jacket and pulled out a small, engraved, silver box. Ron sunk into the recliner and plucked at the holes in the upholstery. His face shifted from paralyzing fear to a stupid grin, temporarily forgetting about the monster and whatever plans she had for him. The contents of the silver box made me think of a heroin kit, which I’d only seen in movies. Heather took out something that looked like an old fashioned, steel and glass syringe and a length of plastic tubing.

  “Get me a clean glass.” Heather pointed at the kitchen.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said. “He’s not going to tell anybody.”

  “I’m not killing him,” Heather said, then put the pipe back in Ron’s mouth. “Toke up.” She held the lighter for him.

  “Here you go.” I gave her a glass.

  Heather attached the weird syringe to the tubing. It occurred to me that I’d never seen a medical instrument like it.

  “Where’d you get that thing?” I said.

  “We have ‘em made, by some guy,” she said.

  Heather found a vein in Ron’s skinny arm. He winced as the needle went in. Heather held the other end of the tube over the glass. Blood pumped out with sickening speed, filling the glass.

  “Oh, what the fuck, man?” Ron’s voice broke when he saw his own blood in a promotional beer glass.

  Heather removed the syringe and laid it, with the tube, on the coffee table. Ron twisted in pain when she cauterized the wound with his cigarette lighter.

  “Put another movie in.” Heather picked up the glass of blood and sat on the couch. “This one has a bullshit ending anyway. I saw it at back when. I remember we threw stuff at the screen. My boyfriend said he was gonna kick somebody’s ass. But he was just talking shit. Wow, I wonder what he’s doing tonight. I loved his car way more than I even liked him. Mustang Mach 1.”

  The movie was almost to Heather’s hated ending. I staggered over and grabbed something random from the case.

  “What was his name?” I said, feeling a little jealous.

  “Who?” she said.

  “Your boyfriend, that you went to drive-ins with,” I said.

  “Kevin.” She smiled slyly.

  “I bet she killed him too,” Ron said, from someplace far away.

  “Shut the fuck up.” Heather kicked the recliner, spinning it halfway around so it faced the TV.

  I joined Heather on the couch. The menu screen for Night of the Creeps appeared on the TV.

  “Alright that’s perfect,” she said. “The Eighties were fuckin’ awesome.”

  Heather downed the glass of blood in one gulp. The results were instantaneous. She sank back into the couch, even more stoned than I was.

  Things got fuzzy after that. I remember Heather taking off her jacket, the feel of her soft breasts through her t-shirt and how warm her skin was. Ron did his best to concentrate on the movie, but he kept looking back. We ignored him and took our time occasionally pausing to watch the movie.

  *****

  Ron shook me awake sometime before noon. I pushed him off and cocked back a fist to show I meant business.

  “Did all that shit really happen?” He paced back and forth. “Did we smoke some laced shit? I mean, she drank my blood and got high off it. And you, you fucked her, man.”

  “Well, your not smart enough to imagine things like that,” I said. “The digital age and drugs fried your brain years ago. Yeah, it really happened.”

  “She’s still here.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t know where, but she’s hiding somewhere in this apartment.”

  “Yeah, she does that,” I said.

  “We gotta stop her.” He rubbed the burn on his arm.

  “I wouldn’t even say shit like that,” I said. “You think she can’t hear us? She could have killed you a couple of times already. This ain’t a fuckin’ movie.”

  Ron sat down on the recliner. I put my feet up on the couch and shut my eyes, hoping he’d take the hint and leave.

  “The other night, when she almost ran me over, I saw what she really looks like.” He leaned toward me.

  “You’re still here, aren’t you?” I didn’t open my eyes.

  “She tricks people,” he said. “My buddies all said she was smokin’ hot later, but she’s a monster. They saw it too, but they didn’t remember it right. I saw her claws, her eyes.”

  “Yeah, welcome to the club. And by the way,” I looked over at him, “you ain’t even seen a real monster yet.”

  “You see her too, don’t you?” he said.

  “You know, you probably don’t want any of them knowing you can see them,” I said.

  “How come?” he said.

  “’Cause you might end up like me,” I said.

  “That wouldn’t be so bad,” he said. “At least you got a hot chick, well sort of.”

  “I’ve been lucky so far,” I said. “I’m probably going to end up dead or in prison.”

  “So will I,” Ron said. “I’m go
nna kill somebody eventually. Maybe my dad. I don’t know. I don’t give a fuck.”

  “Good for you,” I said. “Give it twelve years or so, then you really won’t give a fuck. Your dad, huh? Yeah, I could see that. Guy’s a dick.”

  “Maybe Heather can kill him?” he said.

  “Maybe.” I made a mental note for later. Just in case.

  I paid Ron with a couple of the gold coins. His eyes lit up when he saw how many I had. It tripped some kind of inherited instinct for plunder, buried deep in his white trash brain. I’m sure his ancestors would steal boots from dead bodies, hung at the crossroads. He shook it off, well aware I could see it in him.

  “If any of my shit goes missing, we’ll know where to look first,” I said.

  He managed a forced laugh.

  “Go out and bring me some more of what we had last night,” I said.

  “Sure, should I wait for daylight or something?” he said.

  “I’ll might be asleep, but it doesn’t matter, if she was gonna kill you, she would’ve done it already.” I lied. “And stay outta here when I’m not home.” I pushed him toward the door.

  “Let me know if you need anything else,” he said.

  I locked the door behind him and staggered back to the couch. Dreamless sleep came like death. It had been days since I’d been able to rest that well. The marijuana in my system must have had something to do with it.

  Heather’s zombie-like shuffling woke me up. The sun was almost dead. She was up early. I watched her play with Marcello’s necklace. She wore it next to her cross now.

  “We’re in sync,” she said, glaring at the wood paneling that protected her from some of the dying sun’s effects. “You’re becoming more like us.”

  “How does that even work?” I said. The idea that I might end up a vampire really hadn’t occurred to me. “I thought I was supposed to hunt you guys. I probably can’t even turn into a vampire.”

  “There are no rules anymore,” she said. “Almost all those who knew about them were killed a long time ago. Lee wasn’t the only young vampire to massacre a bunch of elders.”

  “I don’t even know if what I’m doing is right,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” she said.