Enamel

by Tim Sabados

  Someone else was lying on his back a few feet from Sammy. Whoever it was, wasn’t moving. Not even a flicker of life pulsated though his pale skin. Sammy allowed his vision to skip over the man’s torso, across the two bullet holes in his chest and then up to his face.

  Sammy gasped. Jumped backward away from that…that person on the floor. His jaw slackened with shock. “It can’t be,” he muttered.

  “Believe it,” the woman standing in the nearby cell said. “You’re one of us, now.”

  Sammy shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t be…no way!”

  “Yes, you are,” Someone else stated.

  Several prisoners laughed. Others jeered.

  Sammy desperately patted his chest. Didn’t feel any bullet holes. Didn’t feel any pain. He was alive and safe. Wasn’t he? Panic trembled across his nerves. “Just…just wait a minute…”

  He remembered firing his gun, not once, but twice. Then another gun had gone off, too. Burrowing pain had suddenly skewered his chest. Had he been shot, or was he imagining it all?

  He looked down upon the man, a man who looked like him, lying on the floor. At the woman with her fingers pressed against his neck. She shook her head.

  Sammy covered his mouth with his hand. “No…no way. No it can’t be…I can’t be…”

  “Oh, it can,” spoke a voice that crackled like a burning log from behind Sammy.

  The hair on the back of Sammy’s neck stood erect with dread. He spun toward the voice. Gasped with fright. “Who in the hell are you?”

  The gargantuan bald-headed man stepped forward on legs the size of tree trunks. Scales were embedded in his skin. Eyes as dark as the deepest depths of space and void of any emotion. Black suit. Blood-red tie. He pointed at Sammy with a sharp fingernail. “I’d like to think your worst nightmare.”

  Sammy warily stepped backward, trying to keep some separation between him and this…this reptilian-looking thing. His heart hammered against his ribs, but he confidently straightened his shoulders. “Maybe you are or maybe you’re not.” He feebly flicked his hand. “I’ve no need for you.”

  “No need for me?” the reptilian man chuckled with delight. “I don’t care about what you think you need. I’m here for one thing.” His eyes narrowed. “And that’s you.”

  “Me?” Sammy tented his fingers over his chest. Did his best to prevent fear from wrinkling his voice. “What have I done to you to make you want me?”

  The reptilian man gestured with his thick hands to the prison cells on either side of him. “Do I need to spell it out for you?” He licked his lips. “They aren’t yours to keep.”

  Sammy swallowed hard. He tried to stand his ground with a firm tone. “They’re not yours, either.”

  The reptile’s hands curled into fists that resembled wrecking balls. His entire body became taut with anger. “Your insatiable greed has created an imbalance.” He took a heavy step forward. “Those coins weren’t meant for you; they were meant to be possessed by those to whom they were given. Their very destiny is wrapped in those coins.”

  “Well…well…” Sammy stepped backward on trembling legs. “If you ask me, someone’s been taking them and selling them for large sums of money.” He bit his lips. “And it wasn’t me. So I don’t know why you’re accusing me of doing…”

  “They belong to one man,” the reptilian man huffed. The heat of annoyance in his furnace-like breath rippled the air. He pointed toward Aryssa’s friend. “They belong to him.”

  * * * * *

  Aryssa was sitting on the floor hunched over a body. She embraced the man’s head and caressed his face. The tears trickling down her cheeks pinged Charlie’s heart with the ache of longing.

  Sammy had stopped halfway between Aryssa and the reptilian man. Even though Sammy fought against it, the unmistakable weight of uncertainty burdened his posture. Buckled his legs. The ambiguity glazing Sammy’s face made it appear that he was trying to decide which way to run. Then again, was there anywhere he could run that would allow him to get away?

  Charlie looked at the reptilian man. “It’s been a long time.”

  “That it has,” the reptile responded.

  Charlie glanced at the prisoners in their cells, their faces pressed against the glass. Coins clutched in hands. The yelling and jeering had stopped and was replaced with a solitude of silence. The iron claws of tension gripped the air. The hostages seemed to be waiting for what was to come next. Charlie sighed. Realization knocked on the door of his reason. It was all beginning to make sense.

  The steady decline in business over the last several months. These imprisoned souls and their coins—coins that were to be used as payment to travel across the river. Charlie knew that he could walk up and take any, if not all, of those coins. But, he reasoned, Sammy could not.

  Sammy was holding these people captive and torturing them in order to steal those coins. Once he successfully had them in his possession he would sell them on the open market. Use the money to further expand his business. Would it be for drugs? More prostitution? Power? Charlie waved the notion aside. It didn’t matter because Sammy hadn’t found the way to convert them from the realm of the dead into the domain of the living.

  The reptilian man looked up at the warm lights, then settled his dark eyes on Charlie. “I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.”

  “I guess now we know,” Charlie confirmed.

  The man in the gray suit moaned. His hand brushed over his cheek. Head shifted to the side ever so slightly. Was he waking up? Sammy took a small step backward. The rigidity that had bound his muscles looked as if it had eased. Or had it?

  Charlie ran his hand through his long black hair and looked over at Aryssa as she gently cradled a man’s head. A head and a body that looked very familiar. He bent down for a closer look. Slowly exhaled. It…it was his head.

  The instantaneous shock flashed as if it were a blown circuit. Charlie rubbed his cheek with doubt. He had never drifted out of his body before, but had always figured it was possible.

  “You exist in two realms,” the reptilian man stated. “It’s why you see things the way you do. It’s why you can take those coins and bring them into this world.” A pause. “But I’m only telling you something that you already know.”

  Charlie nodded. “I think I somehow knew that.” He cleared his throat, “I guess I never fully thought about it.”

  “This duality is what defines you,” the reptile said. “It’s given you choices.”

  “Kind of figured that it did.”

  What was it about Charlie’s past that made him who he was? As far back as he could remember he had taken souls across the river. He always had bridged that gap between the living and the dead without thinking about it. It was simply like breathing, it just happens. At the moment though, he was completely on the side of an existence he wasn’t overly familiar with. He gestured at the prisoners. “I think it’s high time that I get them out of here.”

  The reptilian man nodded. He pointed his thick, steel cable-like finger at Sammy. “And I need him.”

  “Me?” Sammy shook his head. “We’ve been over this. You don’t…” Held his arms in front of him as if to push the reptile away. “Where can you possibly take…”

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” the reptilian man said sharply.

  Sammy’s brows arched. “I don’t think so.” Stepped backward. “I go where I want to go.”

  “Not for you to decide.” The reptilian puffed his chest. “You’ve created your karma. Now it’s time to pay your debt.”

  “I owe nothing.”

  “You owe more than you think.”

  “Says who?” the words had barely left Sammy’s mouth when in one fluid motion, he spun and sprang toward that metal door and the end of the hallway.

  The reptilian man coiled and leapt. Within the blink of an eye he snatched Sammy’s arm and flung him to the floor.

  Sammy hit the ground hard, forcing the air to burst
from his chest. He writhed in pain. Tried to jerk his arm free, but the reptile’s grasp was too strong.

  Charlie tipped his chin toward the man in the gray suit, who was clutching the back of his head. “What about him?”

  “He’ll be going to someplace special.” The reptilian man effortlessly dragged Sammy across the floor before clutching the nape of the gray-suited man’s neck.

  “Let go!” Sammy yelled. He dug his heels into the concrete. Tried desperately to pull his arm fee. He writhed. Jerked. Grunted.

  The reptile’s brows furrowed with rage. He yanked Sammy upward, twisted his arm and pulled him close. Sammy yelped in pain. “You’re mine now,” the reptilian man hissed. “Do that again and I’ll rip your arm out of its socket and make you feel a pain the likes of which you’ve never felt before.”

  Worry thickly coated Sammy’s face. His body softened into pacification. He allowed himself to be led down the hall while the reptile dragged the man in the gray suit.

  After several steps, when Sammy thought the reptile had dropped his guard, he tried to jerk free of the reptilian’s grasp.

  The reptilian man responded by effortlessly pulling him close. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “You can’t do this!”

  “I can and I will.”

  “No!” Sammy stopped and pulled backward. “You’ve got no authority to…”

  In one lightning-quick movement, the reptilian man released Sammy’s arm and punched him in the face.

  Sammy’s head snapped sideways. A grunt of pain before his body went limp.

  The reptilian man caught Sammy by the shoulder as he sank to the floor. He readjusted his grip before looking over his shoulder at Charlie. “Don’t take too long.”

  “Too long?”

  The reptilian tipped his chin in acknowledgement. He turned away from Charlie and started to drag his prey down the corridor. “Before you’re stuck here and can’t get back.”

  Charlie quickly nodded, then ran to the first cell he saw. He fiddled with the handle that was notched in the glass.

  “I think you need to pinch those two levers together,” Marjorie said.

  Charlie squeezed. “Are you sure that…” the lock popped.

  Marjorie exhaled a sigh of relief as she pushed the door open. “I can’t thank you enough.” Under the warm lights she labored to lift her arm and hold out the coin. “You want this now?”

  “Later,” Charlie answered. He gestured at the prisoners on the other side of the hall. “Help me set the others free and get them out of here.”

  Marjorie nodded. “Where are we supposed to go?”

  Charlie pointed down the corridor leading to the metal door. “That way.” He paused to recharge his voice. “It’ll take you into the factory and then out to the river where you can wait.”

  Marjorie slowly pivoted her head to look at the seemingly endless rows of prison cells. “There’s so many. I…I don’t think I have the strength to do it all.”

  “You don’t have to,” Charlie said. “Get a few open and let them take care of the next ones.”

  Marjorie nodded her understanding. Took a heavy step forward but her shoulders sagged under the oppressive weight of her surroundings. Gait staggered. “This is harder than…”

  Charlie braced Marjorie by her arm. “We’ve got to get everyone out from under these lights. Away from this place before it’s too late.”

  Again Marjorie nodded. Took a deep breath which seemed to fill her with determination. She patted Charlie’s hand with reassurance and then trudged across the corridor toward the cells.

  Charlie’s window was shrinking. He jumped to the next cell and popped the lock allowing the rotund man to exit. He then looked back on Aryssa. To the young woman who had been shackled. To Sammy’s contorted body with its red-stained shirt. Then finally at himself lying lifeless on the floor. An invisible hook pierced Charlie’s gut and pulled him toward his body, the very one that was slowly starting to disintegrate.

  How much time did Charlie have before he became totally separated from his body and never be able to return? Would he be able to free these prisoners if he did reconnect? Would he have enough time to lead these souls out of this oppressive prison? Guide them to where they needed to go? The pull grew stronger, causing him to stumble sideways. Could he resist it? Did he really want to?

  Aryssa sniffled and held Charlie’s lifeless head closer to her chest. The young-looking woman with the gun put her hand on Aryssa’s shoulder. Charlie saw the hive of activity grow as more prisoners were released from their cells and in turn helped free the others. A steady line of people were already slowly making their way down the corridor toward the metal door.

  Charlie could feel the intense pain from the gunshots. Feel the burning hole in his chest. His shoulder. Even if he did go back, would he survive? Would he ever be with Aryssa? The uncertainty multiplied. He looked at the crowd then to his body on the floor. Did he even have a choice? After all, he did exist in two worlds.

  45

  The moon chose to keep itself hidden below the horizon. Maybe she felt the need to take a break from her motherly duties. Or maybe she was just too tired to climb upward into the clear night sky. Whatever the reason, she wasn’t stepping out onto the world’s shadowy stage.

  In the distance a dog barked. Crickets chirped. Somewhere nearby a car rolled over a bump in the road. A cool breeze ruffled the leaves of a large tree. Aryssa inhaled deeply, reveled in the quietness and savored the slight chill of fall’s awakening breath. Even though it was several weeks away, she was already opening her eyes from her nearly year-long slumber.

  Aryssa ran her fingers across the pocket of her jeans. Made sure the vial was still there. In her other pocket was the night’s bounty. There were still several more houses to visit. More teeth to pull out from under pillows. But before tackling the next home, she needed to make a stop.

  “Come on,” Aryssa whispered. She darted off the sidewalk and across the lawn to the side of the house with a ladder leaning against it. One of its windows was covered with a sheet of plywood.

  She crept to a partially opened window and looked over her shoulder at Charlie. “I’ll be right back.”

  Charlie nodded. “I still don’t know why I can’t go with you.”

  Aryssa quietly scoffed. “You know why.”

  “I can be quiet.”

  Aryssa brushed his cheek with her fingers. “Oh honey, you and I both know what would happen if…”

  The window suddenly slid upward, sending a wave of surprise smashing into Aryssa. Charlie jumped backward and was about to run.

  “It’s about time you showed up,” Zoe said with a smile.

  Confusion coated Aryssa’s tongue. “About time? How’d you know that…?”

  Zoe shrugged? “I could smell it.”

  “Smell it?”

  “Yeah.” Zoe pointed at Aryssa’s pocket. “You’ve got three new ones in there. And the crushed ones in there.”

  Aryssa’s jaw dropped with shock. “How’d you know that?”

  Zoe scratched her head. “I just do.”

  “But, that would mean…”

  “Hi Aryssa!” Mackenzie said enthusiastically. She appeared next to Zoe and slid her head out the window. “Where’s Charlie? I know he’s here.”

  “You do?” Charlie stepped up behind Aryssa.

  Mackenzie lifted her hands and wiggled her fingers. “They tingle when you’re close by.”

  “They do?” Charlie’s tone was tinged with doubt.

  “Yeah,” Mackenzie answered. “Happened the last time. Felt it even more this time.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Mackenzie nodded. “Very.”

  “Is it the coins?” Aryssa asked curiously.

  “I think so.”

  Charlie massaged his cheek. “Have you ever driven a…”

  “Mom says thank you,” Zoe said. “She still doesn’t believe that you guys exist.”

  “Hey,
I was supposed to tell them,” Mackenzie stated.

  “No you weren’t,” Zoe fired back. “It was my turn.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “That’s what you said last…”

  “Girls,” Charlie said in a stern voice, “you’re going to wake the neighborhood.”

  “She always does this,” Mackenzie muttered, as if trying to get in the last word.

  “No I don’t,” Zoe countered.

  Aryssa sternly held up a finger. “Hey, you two.” She tried to bury her smile. “Not the time for arguing.”

  “We’re not arguing,” Zoe said.

  “Yeah, it’s disagreeing,” Mackenzie stated.

  “Whatever you want to call it, let’s save it for after Charlie and I leave.”

  “Okay.” Mackenzie sank back into the window. Within a few seconds she giggled. “Mom tripped on the stairs today.”

  Zoe chuckled. “She was carrying this box and it went flying.”

  Aryssa leaned forward with worry. “Is she alright?”

  “Yeah. It was only a box of papers,” Zoe confirmed.

  “They went everywhere,” Mackenzie added. “As high as the ceiling.”

  “Mom wasn’t happy, though.”

  “Yeah, she said a bad word.”

  “A lot of them.”

  Charlie was smiling. He tapped the windowsill and looked up at the nearly finished siding. “Are they close to being done?”

  Mackenzie nodded. “I think so. Mom says that they’re doing a good job.” Her eyes slightly narrowed. “She also says they sit around too much and watch the paint dry.”

  “Why would they want to watch paint dry?” Zoe questioned. “That seems boring.”

  “Yeah,” Mackenzie agreed. “Why watch it when you could just touch it.”

  “It’s a figure of…” Aryssa dropped the explanation. Best to leave it alone before she was forced to give a lengthier description. “It looks like it’s all coming along nicely.”

  “I like my room,” Zoe said.

  “Me too,” Mackenzie added.