“Well, admittedly, this is the only room where I can truly be myself.”
“We all need that,” Paul replied.
“Some more than others,” Mr. Monroe said.
Paul waited; hoping that the pleasantries would be brief because he was really feeling the booze and his body was tired. He ached from bruises, as well.
“Can I ask you a question, Mr. Jackson?”
“Sure,” he said, wishing the prattling leper would just point him in the direction of a place to lay his bones. And he was still hoping on that whiskey.
“How many immigrants do you think this country crushed under its boot to build, say, the railroad?”
Paul was confused. “I don’t understand,” he admitted, with no shame. What the hell kind of question was that?
“The blood spilled in the name of progress,” Mr. Monroe continued.
“I wouldn’t know,” Paul said, growing concerned again. What kind of crazy had he walked into?
“You could say I am a victim of progress,” Mr. Monroe said. “There are always casualties in the advent of new technology. I felt like a weak victim, at first. But then I realized what I had been given in my misfortune.”
“What was that?” Paul asked, wondering how hideous the bastard looked.
“A new classification,” Mr. Monroe explained. “A new set of rules to follow.”
Paul shook his head and had no idea how to engage in this conversation. Maybe the man was drunk, as well. Maybe they both needed coffee.
“They locked me away after the accident,” Mr. Monroe continued. “The explosion had ruined and then reconstructed me, in a bizarre and unanticipated way. I was suddenly a dark mystery that had never been encountered before. I was something that continued, absent of breath or pulse. It scared them, to be sure. And a dissection was forthcoming. I am positive of it. So I had to escape, while I was able.”
“Mister, I am sorry,” Paul said slowly, trying to hide his growing dread. “I am just not following you.”
“I died, Mr. Jackson. The accident had killed me. But I continued to dwell in the rot. Do you understand, now? Maybe I should just show you.”
Mr. Monroe stood and walked slowly into the light. His body, clad in dirty jeans and a flannel shirt, came first. The skin on his hands that showed was grey and sickly-looking. But that could have been a trick of the weak lighting. The fingernails on the hands were dark and deeply bruised. It looked like a hammer had been taken to them all.
Then Mr. Monroe brought his face into the light. It was a blue and dead face, and it was guided by eyes that looked like tiny red crystal balls full of hate, rage and hunger. The skin on his face was shriveled, and sunken. He looked like a spoiled fruit. It was a corpse’s face.
“Energy never dies, Mr. Jackson,” the monster reminded Paul. “It just changes into something new.”
Paul stared at it, and he realized he had never known true terror. He did now, and they were suddenly inseparable. He gripped the arms of the chair he sat in, wanting to propel upward. But the fright inside made him rest there.
“I am less than you and more than you. I am a shadow with teeth,” Billy declared, standing close to Paul now. “I am a clan of one. And I am stronger than any man alive. I feel no discomfort from this state except for hunger pains. I feed when they hit me. It’s not often, but they do come around. And when they do, I have to leave this place; for my sister’s safety. It’s hard to control myself, so I go out and chase something down and consume it. The only conditions are that it has to be alive and it has to squirm a lot. I think eating my prey alive is slowing the decay process. But the squirming element of the act, well… I just enjoy that. I guess that’s just a little perversion on my part.”
The dead man grinned with black teeth and the stench of the grave floated out of his mouth. “Guess what, Mr. Jackson? Tonight I am starving. And you have saved me an errand.”
“Mr. Monroe, please don’t hurt me,” Paul said, pushing back further into the chair. He had never been a fighter. Being a large guy, very few challenged him. And this was good, because he was not skilled at combat. He was big and intimidating to some, but he had never been a bully. Quite the opposite; he was the victim, in most cases of physical confrontation. He had been a victim his whole life. As a kid, he had been taunted to tears by other children. And even as a grown-up husband and father of two big boys, he was tormented sometimes. People pushed him around because they sensed his restraint and saw it as weakness. He was the proverbial nice guy that no one feared; his co-workers, friends or family.
Paul Jackson was a big teddy bear. There was very little bark and no bite to him. He had never raised an angry or frightened hand against another person. Paul just wasn’t built that way. If he couldn’t talk his way out of this, he was a dead man.
“Just in case you think there might be mercy in this room, I should inform you of something,” Mr. Monroe said, his eyes burning brighter. “I ate my own mother.”
“I’m not asking for me, sir,” Paul said, tears crawling from the corners of his eyes. “I have a family, Mr. Monroe.”
Paul looked sadly at the horrifying face, and all he saw on it was hunger and sinister lust. He knew what was coming. And it was going to hurt, even with the liquor in him.
“Animals have families, too,” Mr. Monroe said, pushing in closer to the man. “But we slaughter them and make meals of them, anyway. Are you any better than an animal?”
Paul closed his crying eyes. He wasn’t going to watch it, and he prayed it would be quick.
“Do struggle, Mr. Jackson,” Mr. Monroe encouraged, and then he sank his teeth into Paul’s cheek, biting down to the bone.
***
Susie rushed over to her record player when she heard the man start to scream. She put on her favorite song and cranked it up as high as the volume would play it. She put her hands over her ears, closed her eyes, and sang along.
She went back to her bed. Susie fought the tears, and rocked herself. She let the record play on, after the screaming had stopped. The selections that followed Put on a Happy Face weren’t bad, and she wondered why she had never played them, before. The music suddenly stopped.
Susie opened her eyes.
Billy stood in her room. He had taken the needle off of the record. Her brother was wearing his robe and he looked damp, liked he had just taken a quick shower.
Billy was wearing his happy face, and it glowed at his sister.
Susie was relieved. She smiled at her brother, who took a gold star sticker from his hand and he put it on the chart. One down, two to go.
“I’m going to have to fill that treasure box up again, soon,” he promised, approaching her.
Susie clapped her hands. She couldn’t wait.
“We might have another car, tomorrow,” Billy informed her. “Maybe we could do some shopping.”
Susie nodded, excitedly. She loved to shop; another girly curse.
“What happened to the stranger?” Susie asked the happy face.
“He’s in the guest room,” Billy explained. “He’s sleeping. I’ll take him to the road tomorrow morning. He can find his way from there.”
“Could he have breakfast with us, before he leaves?” Susie asked. She didn’t know why she was pushing her brother in this way. But she had to hear what he would say to this.
The explanation came quickly and easily to him. “Mr. Jackson has a family and they will be very worried about him. I imagine he’ll want to leave very early; before you wake, even.”
Her brother never lied to her, but Susie knew this wasn’t true. This still wasn’t a lie, though. Not to her. They were pretending. They were pretending because they loved each other and they were all either had. Susie was only seven, but she knew already that life could be hard, unfair and cruel.
Life left stains, sometimes. Like the stain on her book. Like the stain on her brother.
“Are you going out tonight?” Susie asked, hoping he wouldn’t have to, now.
“No need,” Billy said, sitting on the bed. “I am all yours.”
Not having to face the night alone made her happier than she had been all day. Susie handed him her book. He sighed and turned to the usual spot.
“Humpty Dumpty?” he assumed.
“Yes, please.”
“Why do you love that one so much?” he asked.
Susie shrugged and shook her head, but she knew why; it reminded her of her brother, in a way she couldn’t explain.
Billy read to her, and Susie settled against him as he did so.
MIDNIGHT SNACK
The silly bastard was barely going forty in the fast lane of the highway. Calvin Winslow noticed the I BRAKE FOR ENTIRELY NO REASON bumper sticker on the flank of the car that was creeping along in front of him.
"Oh, for fuck sake, use the slow lane,” Calvin muttered, deciding to break protocol and use the middle lane to get out from behind and in front of the idiot.
Calvin could have flashed his high beams at the moron to try and nudge him over, but he had almost gotten his ass kicked once with that tactic. The guy he had flashed followed him for miles, alternately flipping Calvin off and demanding that he pull over. There were too many angry people out there and Calvin was generally one of them. Still, it was foolish to endanger his life like that.
Calvin thundered around his tormentor as soon as the neighboring diesel truck allowed him access to the middle lane. He wished for a cloud of dust to bury the inconsiderate dick as he flew around the car, a PT Cruiser; a vehicle you seldom saw in the fast lane. Calvin took the lead back, and was determined to see the PT Cruiser shrink in his rearview. He hadn’t even glanced over to see what a kind of moron was perched behind its steering wheel when he passed. It was too dark for that and he didn’t want to challenge anybody; he just wanted to get his ass home. It was too late at night for this bullshit.
After a mile of glowing in his triumph, the rising distance of Interstate 290 bore an ocean of taillights; the steady red glow indicated to Calvin that there was an accident. Sure enough, even in the dark, he could make out emergency vehicles gathered around an eighteen wheeler on its side. He was too far away to see the specifics of the accident, but it was evident to Calvin that another one of those doped-up truckers had taken a nasty spill. Combine uppers with a pressure cooker job and you ended up with a lot of two-legged road kill, he concluded.
The downed vehicle crossed the center lanes. It would take forever to clear the debris. A fire truck drove the shoulder of the highway past Calvin. It was maneuvering slowly but steadily to the accident site.
Calvin looked in his rearview and noticed the PT Cruiser sat behind him; it had all been for naught. Expecting an angry glance from the driver, Calvin saw an elderly woman in the PT Cruiser gripping at the steering wheel and staring toward the accident. The highway was suddenly a parking lot, meaning one hell of a mess lay mangled up ahead.
Calvin glanced at his wristwatch. 11:42 P.M.
"No, no, no," Calvin hissed, punctuating each word with a slap to the steering wheel. There was an exit for Route 63 before the rise in the Interstate 290. Calvin decided to try a roundabout way home. It took him several minutes and he had to force himself over the lanes as no one was giving him an inch. They complained with their horns and he waved them off, navigating to the exit that no one else was taking.
He left the 290 and sputtered in his Lexus down the deserted feeder of Route 63. The vehicle was long overdue for a tune-up, and it hummed an odd melody. He would have to take it in to the garage and soon.
He felt more at ease, now; like a Siamese fighting fish in solitary water. Calvin grimaced, and then clutched his empty, knotted stomach. He pictured beef hash, lumpy mashed potatoes and canned green beans sitting on a plate next to the microwave when he walked into his home. His stomach churned, not appreciating the vivid image one bit. His wife, Carol, was some catch, he thought, a sarcastic chuckle behind his lips.
Most days, he was broken and unhappy. This day, he was those things and starving to death on top of it all. This travel of his gave him the opportunity to reflect on his life and the mistakes he had made, and he never failed to run through it all over and over again. He could have occupied this time with music or audio books. It could have been turned into a positive chore, with very little effort; just the twist of a knob. But there was no one else in his life to commiserate with, as he had no real friends. So he swam in it once more, the self-pity and condemnation in attendance. This was the show that played in his mind during every commute and he was its most passionate spectator and worst critic.
Calvin drifted back to where his downfall had begun. He had met Carol at a local singles get together; it was something he had been reluctant to attend, but desperate times and all.
Carol had stuck to Calvin as soon as he had entered the circus. It was one of those table hopping things where you had thirty second intervals to try and impress. They spent most of their seconds appraising the other attendees and having a good laugh at them. A dinner date came out of the evening, and soon they were an item. Before Calvin knew it, Carol’s pantyhose were hanging from his shower rod and his answering machine played a duo.
Carol was much younger than him and still held onto a fair amount of her beauty. She was a little on the large side, but Calvin had always liked his women thick. Calvin had found the relationship to be a fine and causal arrangement. The two got along and the sex was fantastic. Carol wanted more from him, and being the pushover for pussy that he was, he had relented to her but only in little pieces at a time. He was still a man after all. Carol had to pull the relationship out of him, but she had done this merrily, shaping it to her liking as she went.
Carol had appealed to him in very base ways, and he was ashamed that these carnal shenanigans worked on him. But seeing her standing in lingerie at the foot of his bed could prompt just about anything from him; be it a visit to her parents or an emasculating floral arrangement to the décor of his living room. His penis made deals on his behalf all of the time.
This was okay, however, because Carol had spoken of partnership and team effort, before their marriage. They were both going to work at it. So he had walked the aisle with her. It made sense at the time. He wasn’t getting any younger and Carol loved him. He had never been one for commitment and responsibility to others, but this could work. Calvin had ignored every instinct inside that was against this union.
The downside had never presented itself to him. It had looked like a no-brainer. He was a draftsman and she was an interior decorator. They were both ambitious and driven in their careers. The two would be able to squirrel away a lot of money and retire at a fairly young age. It was an advantageous deal all around; sex, better tax breaks and financial security. Carol couldn’t cook worth a shit, but every cloud had a shadow on it somewhere.
And what was the first bomb that dearer than life Carol dropped, mere months after their nuptials?
"You're going to be a father," she had exclaimed, with ritualistic glee.
Job? Work? No, no, my friend. At 36 years-old, Carol was tap-dancing in miscarriage land as it was. She was told by her doctor to take it easy for the entire pregnancy, especially the first three months. And Calvin knew that Carol would never go back to a job once the baby was born. She would be a professional mommy. It was what she had always desired and she hadn’t told her husband until it was too late for him to lobby against it.
Calvin shook his head in the darkness of his car; how could he have let it happen? He loved Carol, he supposed, in his own way. But, as fifty years of being single had proven, he fell in love like most people changed socks. Was Carol that special? Or was she a convenience that had decayed to a burden? Was she really the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with? Or was she a gambit born out of desperation? Now, there was a baby involved. After finding out that Carol was pregnant, he had scheduled a vasectomy that same afternoon. No more of that, he had thought, cursing the member that had always gotten him int
o more jams than it was worth.
So at this point in the story he was married and a baby was on the way and he was petrified and angry and too old to be a father and things could not have gotten much worse, in his review of it all. But once the baby had been born, that’s really when Calvin noticed things were changing quickly and in a sinister way. The first sign of dark times had struck him in that treacherous penis of his.
The sex that Calvin found so vital and the only saving grace left in this horrible pact had disappeared. Carol did nothing to please him in the sack anymore. He had understood the time it took her to heal after giving birth to their son. But it had been three months now and he had hardly touched her at all during her rough pregnancy.
Carol never initiated it with him these days. If he fussed about it, she would get annoyed enough to grant him a quickie to be performed silently and without the usual loud dirty talk that made him come like a drunken sailor. And God help him if there was a wet spot left behind in his wake. He understood not wanting to sleep on a cum stain, but the silence thing; that got to him sometimes. He didn’t like having to tip toe in his own castle.
What Price Gory? Page 10