And it showed me the vision, played my mind like a zoetrope showing monochromatic flashes. It compressed my head, and I groaned from the agony. Mister Smiles shoved the images through my eyes in sharp shards:
The little girl turned her head then went still, her eyes still open. Her mother cried hysterically in the corner. Her father prayed at the bedside on his knees. For a moment, the power went out, and I felt myself melt into a blob, a mass of protoplasm. I ejected like snot from a nose during a sneeze, aiming for the little boy. In a few seconds, the long mass now stretched into a taffy string, slithered into the baby boy’s mouth. The child never woke from his nap.
“They’ll blame me,” I said.
Only nature, boy-o. Why shouldn’t you live forever? People die every day. You are a selfish species. Survival of the fittest. So long have I hungered without forming, feeding disease into your bodies, hijacking your cells until finally I took form.
“Just go away. Please go away. Leave me alone.”
I’ll go on away for now, but I can’t leave you alone. We’re best mates forever. Isn’t that nice? BFFs!
And the voice silenced in my head, and I closed my eyes and rolled my head in the leaking vomit under my pillow. Why should I die? I didn’t choose this. It was a gift. Living things fed on other livings to extend their life all the time. Wasn’t I just as much a victim?
So I survived and they’d die. I wouldn’t feel guilty. Not at all.
I lied to myself.
***
Young Brian Wilcox. Age 2. Died Suddenly after a short battle with Lymphoma at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Langhorne.
Susie’s brother tasted so delightful. I want to run free like a rabbit. And I love the color green.
Robert Snowden. Age 6. Died of complications after a short illness at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Langhorne.
Such a sweet lil’ boy. So full of life. He loved licorice. I do love licorice now.
Marko Prince. Age 5. Died after receiving chemotherapy for leukemia at Langhorne Hospital.
Over the moon about this one. Are you listening to me, boy-o? YOU BETTER BE LISTENING TO ME! I’M AS OLD AS THE SUN!
Choo Hee Park. Age 4. Died of an illness.
Pigtails. Never cared for pigtails. But oh so sweet. She had a smile that parted the clouds on a rainy day. Oh so yummy. Yum. Yum. Yum.
The list continued, and I stopped reading the local news on the internet. I’d seen enough evidence to convince me to create a fantasy, to deny the whole mess. I stopped watching television too. I couldn’t stand the news reports:
Pennsylvania state health officials have ordered an investigation in Yardley Borough in Lower Bucks County after several families have suffered a string of sudden child deaths due to late stage cancer. Environmental experts have begun a survey for potential causes, taking samples of water, earth and air, and local companies are cooperating in the hopes of finding the source of this epidemic.
Doctors are baffled by the fast acting disease in what were recently healthy children and are imploring families to bring their children in for screenings. The community has come together to offer comfort to those families who have lost members in what is becoming one of the worst cancer clusters since Tom’s River, New Jersey. Authorities are still unsure of the source, theorizing that perhaps a virus is circulating that affects only certain age groups.
A senior citizen was arrested today in front of the Yardley Borough Municipal building for wearing no pants. He claimed to know the source of the cluster, a monster called Mister Smiles.
Newspaper article continues . . .
***
I laid my throbbing head on the surface of the particleboard desk my mother had bought at Ikea for my dorm room and rubbed my nose in the books and papers. Deadline crept closer, and my instructor rode my ass like a wild bronco. It always got me a little hard when she yelled at me, something I’d explore later via the rich and diverse universe of internet porn. I grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniels poking out from the drawer. I’d partaken for medicinal purposes, to assuage the nightmares that visited me each night, waking me after only an hour or two of sleep. I pulled it out by the neck, popped it open and swallowed a mouthful, then I hid it back in the drawer next to the bottle of caffeine pills that keep me alert. Mister Smiles beat me with clock gears, always punctual and enthusiastic, the way a hound jumps and yawps with a fresh kill in its jowls to show its master. It demanded all my attention, and I wasn’t ready to suffer parenting; so I’d come to just ignore the creature. It had to end eventually. All things ended.
The hell with it. I shut my books, switched off the light and pulled off my t-shirt, ready to crash. The screensaver flared with flying stars, illuminating the dark, and lighting up the two beds, dressers and desk. My roommate stayed the night at his boyfriend’s house, and I relished the time alone, stripping down to my boxers, normally too shy to expose my thin and wiry body in front of the idiot jock.
I maneuvered through a pile of dirty laundry to reach my bed and tripped over a soft mass. Yarn curled in between my toes, and once I regained my balance, I picked up the obstacle: a child’s doll of soft fabric and yarn hair dressed in a blue smock. Maybe my roommate hid a perversion. The doll convulsed in my hand, and tar bled down my hand, dripping along my arm then splattering on the bed. I threw the doll across the room and heard it splat against the wall, then I searched for the light switch and smeared the ichor as I padded wildly in the dark. I found the switch. The light fired on, flashed briefly, then shorted out. In the brief revelation, I spotted movement—a shadow mob curling and oozing around the corners and furniture. I ran for the door and smacked my chest into the desk. Several textbooks fell.
“Have you seen my dolly?” a frail child’s voice inquired. “Sweet Georgie Brown Eyes I call her.”
“You’re home early, Leon,” I said. It had to be a prank. Someone had placed a webcam in my dorm room.
“I can’t sleep without Sweet Georgie Brown Eyes,” she pleaded, her words fast and desperate.
“I don’t have your doll!”
The disembodied girl wept from behind the bed.
A tiny hand gripped my knee, and I flinched and fell on my ass. This time a boy’s spoke, mostly in gibberish: “Mommy-bunny?”
“I’m not your damn mother.” Tiny fingers gripped my knee. Exhalations breezed along the back of my neck, made from small lungs not yet fully grown—a body unfinished, denied maturation. Their spirits roamed limbo, not new enough to reset their life cycle, but not old enough to mature. They lingered in the in-between places, the dark space between rooms inside the walls. Need consumed their spirits. Children exist in desperate need. I wept often as a child and held my arms to the air for my mother to pick me up, then I’d collapse in despair when my mother ignored me.
More voices, all tiny, inchoate, hollow and sweet with need, cried out to me. Their shadow hands reached from the darkness, defined by the dim light from the computer monitor. I knew their purpose, but I refused to accept responsibility. The voices merged into a chaotic choir, and I lost track of the count.
“It’s not my fault.” I pushed back against the rug, burning my bare legs. The huddled shadows merged into a gestalt and slithered towards me, reaching for me. Viscous oil slithered and slurped as their flesh, and the mass dripped black tar onto my hands. I shivered from their icy touch and yelped, pushing back harder and hitting the dresser.
“Mommy-Bunny?”
“My dolly.”
“We were going to the beach.”
“My stomach hurt so bad.”
“I don’t like the dark.”
They poured over me, covering my body in a cloak of despair. Contact with the shadow mass froze my flesh. Voids composed their bodies, black holes in the living world that sucked out warmth and light. Their little hands reached for comfort, for safety, for a parent’s hand to guide them, burning my flesh like the touch of arctic wind. I flailed, and the mass tightened around me, cutting off my air. My lungs burned and
nearly burst. I kicked off the wall and tumbled to the door then grabbed the knob. The choir clawed at the rug, catching my bare foot. My boxers yanked down in the struggle as I pulled myself to the light.
“Daddy that you?” one of the voices said. Then they all joined in the plea: “Why did you let us die?”
“God let you die!” I yelled and crawled out the door.
The resident assistant found me huddled and naked in the smoking lounge. She called my parents, who came and picked me up. My mother would not look at me or speak to me, sighing through the car ride home and wringing her hands.
***
For a month, I barricaded myself in my bedroom. I didn’t go back to Drexel. I didn’t leave the house. I shut out the sun with blackout drapes and played Warcraft, leveling character after character to max.
Each night I suffered the same ceremony. First, Mister Smiles came to haunt me, to brag about its appetite and fine meals, to tell me how we’d live forever. It talked to me every night for at least a week, then he’d go silent. The next night, it bragged about a new child. Then the children came. The mass swelled with new souls, and they screamed and moaned until I’d crash into a stupor.
I sat in the window seat, opened up a pack of cigarettes stolen from my father’s cartoon, and tried to light it with my father’s Zippo. It didn’t ignite, out of fuel so I snuck out to the garage and found a bottle of lighter fluid. My parents ignored me, watching television, and I returned to my room, filled it and ignited the cig’. I took a puff then sipped from another bottle of Jack Daniels, also stolen from my parent’s liquor cabinet. They didn’t miss it. They had a service come every week to replenish their supply.
“They won’t stop coming,” I said, eyes dry when they should have dripped.
Ignore the brats, Sunshine. Turn cold. Go old. Dry your soul. You have no more need of that torn piece of cloth. We’ll live forever in the dark. Your kind deludes yourself with an afterlife. Void beyond. Jumping off the cliff. No good waiting. Death is the doctor that cures life. Death has no eyes, and the good doctor keeps your eyes in his pocket. It is kind.
“Immortality isn’t worth this,” I whispered. My mouth dried out, and I choked on parched sand in my throat.
Don’t be such a wuss.
“They won’t let me sleep.” I chugged from the Jack Daniels then sucked down the cigarette. I lit another. If I could make myself sick, bring back the cancer maybe in my lungs, I could justify the murders I’d caused.
I rubbed the burns down my body, scars made from their icy flesh, the ethereal shadow of their bodies. As lost souls in the living world, they existed as voids, leeching body warmth. Their touch burned me cold every night, and my skin hardened, turning into a carapace. I sunk beneath it, buried and lost. I felt myself slipping away, drying up and dying inside like my parents.
But I’m having so much fun. Relax and enjoy it. They’re all so tasty, well not this one. Too old for me, but nothing was close at hand. I looked around the hospital for hours. I’m close by too, just down the street. Come and say hi, boy-o.
“In a thousand years, a world of shadow children will scream in my ears, never stopping. Glaciers will grow in my flesh. I long to be warm, but you’re never going to let me go to hell.” I reached for the nearly full bottle of lighter fluid, popped the lid and aimed at the wall, the furniture and curtains. “I’d rather be ash.”
What ya doing there, boy-o? Having a little fire to warm your hands by? We going to toast marshmallows?
“Their hands rake cold. I’m ice. I’m freezing in the wind.” I flicked open the Zippo, igniting a pure fluid flame.
You’re not going to do it. You’re a child throwing a tantrum.
I closed my eyes, tossed the Zippo, then stretched my arms out and fell onto my bed. The heat wave rushed over me, and the curtains crackled as they burned. The flames spread, and warmth soothed my wounded body, heating and melting the ice patches growing under my flesh.
You can’t do this! So long have I waited. I am not life. I am unlife. I swam in the darkness before light came to burn me. Long have I waited, growing my body in man, what you call cancer. So many times. This will not be. We’re going to live forever and ever together.
The flames spread around my body, burning hearty now, a really good fire. It tickled my feet and raked up my flesh. I sighed, finally feeling warm again, immune to the chill of children’s fingers.
I choked on the smoke, and my lungs swelled. The smoke alarm keened in the hall, piercing through the house, mimicking the shrill voices of the void children. Mister Smiles screamed in my head, ordering me to flee, to save myself.
There is no heroic sacrifice. This is a fool’s crucifix. Your body will live, burned and in agony, seared flesh and charred muscle. I’ve pulled you from death. And I’ll have to listen to your moans and cries for eternity. No sir!
I ignored it, hoping the fire burned the sum of my flesh and bone to ash, to resign my nervous system, my mind and feel no more. The heat cracked the glass of my window, and the shards sprayed into the yard below. The crimson mass, bubbling and stirring, climbed through the glass shards. It compressed like a spring then fired at the bed. I crawled back, hitting the wall.
You can’t be rid of me so easy. We’re bonded. Joined at the cell. Now say AHH!
I screamed, and it leapt into my mouth, choking me. I yanked at its body, my fingers slipping off its gelatinous flesh. It pulsed in my mouth and fed down my throat.
Idiot! This must be quick. Time will start again. The debt must be paid. The malignancies will grow fast. Now go. I will not die!
My body weakened. It merged into me, starting the clock again, thawing my metabolism. Eternity vanished. Mortality reigned again. Lumps popped up in my throat. Fatigue overwhelmed me as the blood cancer flourished. It reached into my legs, forcing its will against mine. The cancer weakened me, and my lungs burned from the smoke. I nearly blacked out. Mister Smiles possessed my limbs, forced me off the bed and launched me through the wall of flame and into the hall. Then, it tossed me down the stairs and out the front door, where my parents waited for the fire department, showing little concern for their only son.
Before I passed out, I vomited Mister Smiles back into the world—to run and play and eat the children.
***
For a week I paced the psych ward of Saint Mary’s Hospital. I scratched at my head until my hair fell out in clumps, leaving swollen angry gouges in my scalp that got infected and oozed pus. My new master, Doctor Sullivan—a blind psychologist who wore two glass eyes of captured rain clouds—warned me that if I continued to hurt myself, he’d have to restrain me to my bed, so I fought my hands and arms, always picking and ripping, sometimes sitting on them in the day room.
At night, they shot me up with drugs so I could sleep, but I heard the children whispering through the darkness. Their silvery outlines swam in the apoptotic swamp beyond waking, a league just before death. I woke with burns down my body in the pattern of tiny hands. The doctors treated me with a cream that smelled like old people.
“You hear voices?” Doctor Sullivan asked.
“I’m hearing one now.”
“Voices of children not there?”
“Just because you can’t hear them doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
What a moron! This is hysterical. Don’t fret, boy-o. You’ll be riding the hog high when the Good Doctor Sullivan here is feeding the begonias. So get some rest. We’ve got so much to do! This one is so tasty, like cold Pizza in the morning. Got to jump off soon. She’s fading. Tonight’s the night! Then onto new pastures! We might have to move on soon, maybe get a place in Philly.
It screamed in my head, its voice amplified, and I knew it had to be close, right on top of me. Warm. Warmer. Red freaking hot! In our struggle, it had possessed my body, having grown strong and powerful on the life it had sucked down.
The doctors did a C.T. scan and M.R.I. after my parents committed me, searching for brain tumors to explain my anti-s
ocial behavior. They found no trace of the offending cells. The tumors deflated after Mister Smiles fled my body. The masses grew in minutes, nearly bringing me to my natural end—nearly ending both of us. I sensed its terror as my life force had drained, the cancer growing fast, catching up, killing me.
Providence, and the American medical system, delivered me to its hunting grounds. It had to find a new host tonight, and I’d exploit its vulnerability. I’d watched the system here, studied the burned-out and careless staff. They snuck out to a maintenance staircase in the back of the ward for a smoke and often didn’t lock the door, since they couldn’t very well sign out the keys breaking hospital policy.
Joe the Orderly did a bed check, and I waited for the flashlight to pass in the ward. I could feel Mister Smiles close, sensing its hunger. It suffered a void that could never be filled. Its mouth always watered. I’d end our agony. I told myself I’d do it for the children. I desired a noble end, going down in a self-sacrificing orgasmic blaze of glory. I could give myself that deception. It’s not that fate picked me by giving me cancer—just a mathematical anomaly, the cost of being alive—but it comforted me to think that I had a special mission, to put Mister Smiles back into the darkness. My life had brought so much death to the world, though I hadn’t meant it to do that. This was the truth of all human life, and I could forgive myself that too.
I slipped out of my room, not disturbing my psychotic bunkmate who muttered about wet hookers as he drifted to sleep. The lock on the door had snapped, and the hospital never bothered to fix it. I slipped down the hall, hiding in the shadows. I passed by the nurses’ station, down the back ward and into the stairwell. Broken hospital equipment—wheelchairs, I.V. poles, gurneys—littered the landing and piled on the steps. Joe the Orderly dropped his cig’, surprised to see me.
“Back in your room, chickenshit!”
I grabbed a snapped I.V. pole and smacked the back of his head. He dropped to his knees, rolled down the stairs and collapsed semiconscious on the basement landing. I kept the pole in case I had more trouble and climbed the stairs to the next floor.
Bleed Page 5