Evil Jester Digest, Volume 2

by Holly Newstein

“What? Go squeeze one out over a cactus bush?” Danny shrugged. “I don’t care. Just don’t ask me to take anything out that might get stuck in ya.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say.”

  “I know what you were gonna say.” Danny stepped away from the group and put his binoculars back up. “Now go away and fuck off.” To emphasize the point, he gave Von the finger over his shoulder.

  “Your mother.”

  Von sounded half-serious, to which Danny laughed. “I don’t got a mother. Just like our Atheist Boy.”

  ***

  “We spotted one.” Von hurried towards their pickup. He leaned in and nudged Danny, who’d fallen asleep on the shell’s floor. “Come on!”

  “I heard ya.” Danny pushed up by grabbing the metal seat.

  Watching from outside, Sammy creaked his neck and shut his eyes. Come on headache—go away. First day out and my body fails me.

  Von brushed by Sammy. “You ready, kiddo?”

  “Yup.”

  “Look through your goggles.” He pointed to a dune a few hundred feet from them.

  Sammy spotted the tops of three illegal heads. They crouched down behind a north-side dune.

  Solo rushed toward them. Fast. He hopped over the dune so fast, Sammy had trouble making sense of everything. The illegals vanished below the line of sight with Solo.

  Behind Solo, Danny and Von charged the dune.

  How are they all running so fast?

  He thought for a moment—tried to reason it out.

  It’s got to be the night vision. Playing tricks on things. Making them look faster. He took his eyes away from the goggles and squinted.

  Sam hurried to the dune.

  What do I do now? What’d they say in training? Don’t go in as a gang. If you see anything or anyone, call for backup. Don’t act alone. What the hell are you guys doing?

  Turning rank and sour, the air smelled worse than before. He couldn’t place the scent.

  They’re playing a joke on me. They’re just fucking with me. Hazing me. Breaking me in.

  He hurried closer to the dune. He wanted to yell to them and let them know he was in on their shit. But he didn’t. Just in case they weren’t messing around.

  Dry, rotten desert air filled his sinuses. It smelled like dirt and bad meat. He licked his tongue across his back teeth, which felt like they had food stuck between them.

  Sammy’s head pounded, and all he wanted to do was put his head down. Maybe I am hungry. If I just had a cheeseburger, this headache might go away.

  He heard slurping from the ditch.

  Sammy sniffled and mucous trickled from his inner nose to just outside his nostril. He wiped at it with his sleeve. Not the time to be getting sick.

  He creaked his neck and shoulders, which did nothing to relieve the headache.

  His teeth hurt. He tongued the front ones, convinced pieces of apple skin were lodged between them. He winced.

  Damn it. Haven’t been sensitive like that since I had braces. What the hell?

  To make sure it wasn’t a fluke, he pushed his tongue towards his upper pallet and winced again.

  Sammy’s stomach rumbled. Loud.

  His palms and fingers went numb and his glands ached.

  What’s happening to me?

  Sam inched closer, although he was seriously considering heading back to the shell to put his head down.

  He kept walking instead.

  Keep focused and forget the pain. Mind over matter.

  He shut his eyes, took a breath, and headed towards Danny, Von, and Solo.

  With each step, he saw more of someone’s bent arm moving just over the ridge of the dune.

  They had to be digging. Or tearing. Or something.

  Around the dune, Sammy spotted dark shiny splotches.

  Something deep and instinctual turned on inside him.

  He raised his chin and took the last few steps that led him over the dune.

  Sammy saw Danny hunched over someone. Both bodies shook. Danny’s arms tore at the person under him. Sammy heard more of the slurping noises.

  “Danny?”

  His teammate turned his head to the side.

  His eyes are different.

  Blood dripped from Danny’s mouth, and he wiped it clean with the back of his hand. It appeared darker.

  Because it’s caked in blood.

  “Well, what’d you think we did out here? Give these poor little ol’ folks lifts back across the border?”

  His voice is different.

  Sammy stood and re-processed what he was looking at until he felt his bottom lip trembling and the tops of his legs going weak.

  Twenty feet south of Danny, Sammy spotted Von and Solo hunched over two other people. They didn’t turn back to look at him.

  But he did catch someone’s eye.

  A woman.

  Her eyes met his—Sammy felt more scared than she looked.

  He turned back to Danny, who’d resumed his supper. Sammy talked to Danny’s back. “We need to call for support. For backup. Like we’re supposed to.”

  Danny laughed. That fucking laugh. “We saved the baby-maker for you, kiddo.” He turned his head and smiled at Sammy. “Your teeth starting to hurt yet?”

  ***

  Sammy felt the sand on his cheek and above his eye. Pain cycled through his body in waves. “Kill me,” he said as Danny leaned over him. “Hurts too much. Just do what you’re going to do?”

  Danny frowned. “Oh, no,” he said. “You ain’t getting off that easy, kiddo. Got something here that’ll make you feel a gazillion times better.”

  He creaked his head to the side, motioning Von and Solo to drag the woman up towards Sam. “I’ll take it from here,” he said. “Gracias.”

  The woman faced Sam, and they looked each other in the eye. Danny dove down on the girl and jumped back up.

  For a brief moment, it looked as though he hadn’t done anything. But blood soon gushed from her throat.

  “She’s bleeding out, homie,” Danny said. “You gonna let her die slow, or do you want to take care of her?” His voice lowered an octave. “You know you want to taste her.”

  “No,” Sammy said. “I’m not...like that.”

  Danny bent down, grabbed the woman’s shoulders and lifted her. He dropped her in front of Sam. “Guess I gotta spoon feed her to ya, don’t I?”

  Her blood flowed into the sand, and Sam could smell the minerals and sustenance—it made the ache in his head and body worsen. His lips and throat felt dry—his whole being felt dry.

  Sammy needed her blood.

  He managed to crawl a few inches. She’d closed her eyes, which made him a little more comfortable about doing what he had to.

  “That’s it.” Danny hovered over him with his arms crossed. “Go on. Taste it.” Von and Solo walked up beside Danny and watched Sammy. He could sense them lingering over him.

  The girl’s torn flesh stopped gushing. He clearly saw the wound, which was curiously luminescent. It reminded him of how the FLIR saw body heat, except that it was his eyes that were doing it and not some fancy technology.

  Her complexion was young and burnt brown. Her jet-black hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

  What am I doing? I came here to help people. I’m not a monster like this.

  His neck went stiff and the pain inside his skull increased.

  Do it, he thought. She’s already dead. Go along with it. They’ll probably kill you if you don’t. You can report them tomorrow. But he didn’t believe what he was thinking.

  Sam wanted to drink—to eat.

  He shook his head back and forth a few times, grazing her wound like a tentative lover.

  Don’t know if I can.

  I don’t know.

  Licking at his teeth, he found they’d changed into sharp, pointed things.

  How did this happen to me?

  He shut his eyes, opened wide, latched on, and sucked warm, milky blood onto his tongue. For a moment, his headache
worsened.

  Then everything turned clear.

  His body stopped hurting.

  After the final drops bled out onto his tongue, Sammy rolled onto his back and looked up at the starry night. His headache was replaced by a drunken buzz. All he wanted was to sleep. Near him, he looked at the dried husk.

  “You drained her nice. She’s good and ready for America now.” Danny peered down at him, and Sam realized he’d cupped his hands between his knees. Danny pointed and smirked. “You’re going to have to wait until you get home to squeeze one off, my friend, unless you want us to leave you out here. Your head feel better?” He put a hand out so that Sam could get up.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. But you ain’t gonna want to be out in the open in a few hours when it gets light out. Now help me move her inside the shell.”

  Sammy found he had more energy and more strength than he'd ever had in his life. He picked up the woman’s legs while Danny grabbed her under the armpits, and they lifted her.

  “What's happened to me?”

  “You're a Vampiro now, my friend. Spread the wealth.” He walked backwards.

  “I didn't want this.”

  “But you like it, don't you? Feels good.” They moved towards the shell. “Only bad thing is it tends to close your social circle a bit.”

  At the pickup, Von and Solo lifted their prey into the shell. “You guys almost ready?” Von asked. “We got to get on the road soon. Sun’ll be up in two hours. We got to make it back long before then.”

  Danny and Sammy lifted the woman up and into the shell. They laid her down next to the other members of her family. “So that's why there’s no windows in the shell,” Sammy observed. “Those people? They going to change? Like us?”

  “Just in time for their asses to get processed and back in Mexico,” Danny said. “If not, then...” he made a slicing motion across his own throat. “We'll have to take care of them.”

  “Then what? We just send them home with nothing?”

  “Not with nothing.” Danny smiled and touched his fangs with his tongue. “They'll have these.”

  “What about me? What do I do?”

  “You guard the border. Make sure no one gets through. Grab the ones that do and throw them in the cab. Give them a little goody to bring back to Mexico. They can share with all their friends what America has to offer. They want to take from our country so bad and give it back to theirs, well, here’s to them.”

  “Do we have to bite all of them? Turn them all into these things?” Sammy stepped away from the shell so that Von could shut the door.

  “We change all of them. Make it an epidemic. Let ’em kill each other. Hell, they’re going to, anyway. We might as well speed up the process.”

  “What if I don't want to do this?”

  “Where else are you going to go to get what you need without getting caught? You going to go to your neighbor’s house? Eat his kids?”

  “No, but... I read that vampires can eat mice and birds and dogs and...”

  Danny laughed. “You need human blood, my friend. There’s not enough of what you need in mouse blood. You’ll starve.”

  “I just wanted to give them some dignity.”

  Danny made a sour face. “This is better than selling oranges on the highway or begging for work at Home Depot, isn’t it? Now their lives have a purpose.”

  “To kill more people?”

  “They're not people,” Danny said. “Not anymore. Not since they tried to suck us dry. Now those parasites can suck their own country dry.”

  “I just wanted to help people.”

  “These aren’t people anymore, in case you haven’t noticed. They’re Vampiro. You’re helping to save millions of Americans.”

  ***

  Sammy wakes up to sunlight burning his eyes as the pickup soars across the dark highway. He’s hurting, but feeling better. The blood, Sammy knows. It’s the blood.

  Danny asks, “How’s your arm, kid? Still hurt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It should. That’s where we got ya.”

  “Got me?"

  “Where they put the goods in you that gave you the taste, buddy—the taste for blood. You got to drink that all the time.” That laugh. “You ain’t ever going anywhere now, Homie. Trust me. It never ends. Things ain’t ever gonna be the same.”

  Many are haunted by the past, plagued by the things that could have been or should have been. But for the girl in our next story, a dark yet hopeful gem from the brilliant mind of Holly Newstein, the past is not the problem. It’s the future she hopes to glimpse in her crystal ball, desperate to know if hope will ever surface to chase away the shadows of her terrifying life.

  Although the future is not where Holly is about to take us, “Kristall Tag” is an eloquent reminder of words once penned by William Shakespeare.

  “…what’s past is prologue.”

  So let us make that journey now…

  World War II is winding down. Russian occupied Berlin, ravaged by war, is in a grave state of distress…

  Kristall Tag

  Holly Newstein

  Esme awoke to the rumble of tanks in the street, grinding through the rubble left behind by the bombs. She opened the heavy shutters an inch or two and peered through the dusty, cracked window. She saw the hammer-and-sickle stenciled on the sides of the tanks, and the soldiers marching, some stopping to fire into doorways. Her eyes filled with tears, but she angrily knuckled them away.

  She was a fourteen-year-old orphan in shattered Berlin. Her father had died three years ago at Stalingrad. Two weeks ago, her mother had been killed on the street when a shell destroyed the building she was passing. She was crushed under the rubble with four other hapless souls. Esme had cried all that night, but now she knew tears would only get in her way.

  ***

  Her apartment building at 27, Metzger Strasse had been badly damaged by shelling, but her own first-floor apartment was intact—if you could call plaster dust all over everything, exposed laths, pitched floors, and no electricity intact. The heat was gone, and there was only occasional rusty water from the kitchen tap. Esme stayed in what was left of the apartment. Her mother had told her that if anything happened, she was to go to Mrs. Schmidt’s and stay there. Mrs. Schmidt was nice, but she had seven children and two bedrooms. Besides, Esme had lived at 27, Metzger Strasse all her life, and it was her last connection with happier times.

  Esme had braved the twisted, splintered stairs to explore the wrecked part of the building, invading her former neighbor’s apartments, ignoring the broken, bloating bodies, gathering tins of food and blankets and men’s clothing—it was warmer than wearing skirts and socks, and men’s clothes were easier to move in. She also had heard her mother whispering with her friends about the savage things the approaching Red Army were doing to women, and thought it might be better for her if she dressed as a boy. She plaited her long fair hair and hid it under a cap.

  Being a boy was not so easy in these last days of the Reich either. The SS were snatching boys and old men off the street and drafting them to defend Berlin. Herr Gruber, who lived on her block, had been made a colonel in the SS, even though he was gimpy and fat. He enjoyed shooting anyone who hesitated to join, and Esme had seen him order a group of new recruits to string up a boy who refused. The boy had kicked wildly and soiled himself before he died. Esme always looked for Herr Gruber before she left her apartment.

  Her friend Erik had been drafted by Herr Gruber. She came across him near Metzger Strasse. He was wearing a uniform much too large for him and sitting in a trench.

  “What are you doing, Erik?”

  “I’m in the Army now. I am defending the Fuhrer and the glorious Reich from the Russians.” His lips trembled.

  “Erik, go home.” They both listened for a moment to the pounding thunder of the shelling, not far away.

  “No, no. I have met the Fuhrer. I have pledged my life to him.” He pulled on a blanket, exposing an anti-tank gren
ade. “See, when the tanks come, I will roll under them and detonate this.”

  Esme met Erik’s frightened eyes. No need to point out that Erik could hardly carry the grenade, and it was suicide. The Russians would shoot him before he got near any tanks.

  “How will you detonate it?”

  “I don’t know. But I have to try. Heil Hitler!” His voice shook, even as he tried to sound fierce.

  Esme felt a flare of anger at the Fuhrer for what he had done to Erik...and to her. But she knew better than to say anything. She reached into her pocket and handed him a battered, precious tin of sardines. It was leaking oil from one dented corner.

  “Goodbye, Erik,” she said and walked away.

  ***

  She spent her days scavenging with others in bombed-out, abandoned buildings, searching for food and hiding from the shelling in cellars full of frightened, hopeless people. Her ration card was buried in the rubble with her mother, so she could not even queue up for the scant rations still available. One of the things she had found on her foraging trips had become her prize possession.

  It was a crystal ball, taken from a Gypsy and sent home as a souvenir. It had glinted at her in the rare, smoke-tinged April sunshine. When she scraped it out from under a pile of pulverized rock and splintered wood, it was miraculously unscratched. It felt heavy and cool to the touch, but warmed as it nestled into the curve of her palm. She polished it on her coat and gazed into it, as she had heard the Gypsies did to see the future, but saw nothing other than her own dirty face and the ruins all around her. Still, it was a rare and pretty thing amid the ugliness, so she took it home.

  At night, with the shutters closed tight and a candle for comfort, she gazed into the crystal ball. Instead of the future, she saw the past. The crystal brought her memories sharply alive as she focused deep into the curved, distorted world inside the ball. She could see herself, a young girl, swinging between her mother and father as they walked through the clean green streets of Berlin. All the buildings were draped in red bunting, the Nazi swastika emblazoned everywhere. Everyone was joyful and happy because the Fuhrer had promised a thousand years of prosperity and glory. She saw a Sunday dinner with her family—her mother and father, her Oma and Opa. She could smell the savory hams and wursts, the schnitzels, and the cakes her mother was so proud of.