HELP! WANTED: Tales of On-the-Job Terror

by Edited by Peter Giglio

  All wrong.

  Someone had taken shears to them, a hacksaw, she didn’t know. They were cut down to fat, raw, one-inch stumps. The tips had been shaved by hand, making her vividly recall the first time she’d seen an amputee change his prosthesis—a raw bulb where a child’s elbow should have been.

  She looked around wildly, at the grass still wet with dew. When? Why? To what purpose had they been mutilated? Leper roses.

  Her leper roses.

  ***

  “Julio…?”

  “Uh…whozat? Hmm…?”

  “Julio, its Sal. Oh, baby.”

  “Whssit? Sal? Oh, wow, it’s 6:30—you okay, babe? Something is wrong?”

  He hated to be woken.

  “Yes. Something’s wrong. Julio—I bought roses and they’re stumps.”

  “What? You bought stump-roses?”

  “No. I bought Passion’s Pride, Pale—never mind. Healthy roses, with flowers. And they’re mutilated. Mut—”

  “Sally, I thought someone had died! Dios! Take a grip! You’re confused. For fuck’s sake, they’re plants, not people.”

  Tears stung her throat. “That doesn’t help—I mean, someone’s doing it, Julio. Someone is. They’re doing it! Don’t make fun of me…” She burst into tears.

  “Hey, okay, I’m sorry. It’s early still, and my shoot went late last night. Look, no one’s doing anything to you…”

  “But how can you explain—”

  “Look, let me shower and grab a bite. I’ll be over by nine, okay?”

  Sally couldn’t look at the roses again. She tried to sleep, but only managed to sob into a pillow.

  At 7:30 the gardeners arrived. The noise was unbearable. She stole a glance out the window. Right beneath her, a thick dark man wearing a wife-beater, his face scored with wrinkles, stood huddled like a sherpa under his leaf-blower, its great metal body strapped to him like an insect’s carapace.

  A single leaf did a helpless dance through the air.

  For a moment there was silence, then she heard the voice of Signor Manuel. He spoke quietly, addressing the heavyset man. “Ka su…Mnu feg.” It sounded like he spoke with a leather tongue.

  Then, peeking out further, Sally saw the tongue’s tip protrude. Black like a reptile’s tail, it dallied within the inflamed gap between two front teeth.

  The other man nodded, scratching his belly. “Ka.” He looked up at the window, and Sally ducked down. She could barely see out now.

  The man laughed and made the crude outlines of a woman’s body with his hands. The gardeners laughed in unison.

  At nine she heard Julio’s car. He let himself in and found her upstairs in bed staring at the ceiling. He looked hassled, and worried, too.

  “Do you still love me?” Sally quavered, red-eyed.

  “Still? You’re regressing, babe. I love you, you know that. We’ve been over this.” He spoke gently. “You should go talk to them.” He shrugged one perfect shoulder toward the window. “They’re as scared of you as you are of them, mi bebe.”

  “You know I don’t speak Spanish.” The plea was loud in her eyes.

  He looked away. “You should learn.”

  Like an automaton, she threw on sexless clothes: an over-sized T-shirt and Julio’s sweat pants. On the way out, she encountered Guadalupe cleaning the downstairs toilet. Guadalupe, who had a big heart, burst out suddenly, “Miss Sally! He no nice to you!”

  Had she heard our slightly raised voices?

  “Oh,” Sally replied vaguely with a sick smile, “it’s okay.”

  Guadalupe sniffled.

  “What I’m really worried about is, well, the gardeners. You know, Signor Manuel—” she waved ineffectually toward the outside.

  “Ay!” Guadalupe crossed herself and looked away, back at the toilet, and began to scrub fiercely.

  Sally tried to say something, but the maid wouldn’t meet her eyes. She thought she heard Guadalupe muttering, “No good, es muy mal . . . pericoloso . . .”

  Fleetingly, Sally wondered if she was now able to voice her true opinion of Julio, but in the same fleeting moment, he seemed…less, so small…compared to what was outside. Confused, she headed for the door…

  The gardeners looked at the ground, avoiding her eyes like they always did, grinding, mowing, leaf-blowers raging. “Inside-out vacuum cleaners,” one of her friends frequently called them.

  She approached Senor Manuel, who was methodically dismembering a small bush with his shears.

  “Buenos dias, Senor. I—”

  “Eh?”

  She pointed to what had been the roses.

  All the machines stopped at once.

  “Why…are…they….not…?” she made some lame gestures with her hands, snipping at the air.

  He looked over at one of the other gardeners, a squat young man who grinned back at them. He was missing all his front teeth.

  “Quem,” Senor Miguel whispered confidentially. Then he grinned, too. Or was it a leer?

  Sally backed into the house, past the lurid stumps of her roses.

  Julio was ferreting around in the refrigerator, addressing a beer as he heard her come in.

  “See?” he announced. “Like I told you. They’re people too. We’re all just people. Chica. I don’t know how to say this, but you come from…well, from money, let’s face it. You had privileges. You had servants! First the black people, then—” He faced her, waving a bag of tortillas. “—Latinos! Now I’m not saying…” He fished out a jar of salsa.

  “Julio. You…call…the company.”

  “And tell them what?”

  “About the roses. Tell them the gardeners are fired for destroying my roses.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Well, I think you should call. It’s your house.”

  He wasn’t going to man up about this. She sighed—she always did the hard things herself, anyway. This was just one more. Sort of. But what about all those jobs? All those families? And she did want the Ficus gone. Maybe she shouldn’t do it. She looked out the window once more…and what she saw decided her.

  It was wrong.

  Far too wrong.

  “Julio, look—outside there. At the truck. Something strange is—”

  “I’m reading the paper. Carajo, Sally. A truck is a truck. Let me tell you something. These people have poor families. Look at my jeans, the hole here at the knee.”

  “I can fix that if you want.”

  “No! In Argentina when the jeans have a hole we don’t buy a new pair like here—”

  “But—”

  “I send them to my mother and grandma.”

  “You send then to your mother? Really?”

  “My mother! She is fantastic! Wonderful. And my grannie sews, and then they send them back—”

  “I guess. Listen. About that truck. Have you noticed how we never see it come or go? Same with the workers’ truck.”

  “Dios mio.”

  “Okay, that’s a coincidence. But—the spelling on it is all wrong. I mean, I thought it would say Tacqueria or something. But it looks like Greek, not Spanish.”

  “Greek tacos? Mmmm.”

  “No. ‘Atoque…Tormii…Herk…Em.’ That’s all I can make out.”

  “So?”

  “Julio, they’re bringing the food back and sitting down under the Ficus. I can see everything.”

  “Sally.” He folded the paper loudly. “Should they eat standing? What?”

  “Look at the food. It’s not regular food.”

  “Right. What kind of food is it?

  “It looks like, um, moss. Moss with beef and some bloody sauce with…maybe some hair in it. They hardly have to chew it…it slides right down.”

  “So maybe they drink wheatgrass.”

  “You know they don’t.” She wondered if she was starting to hate Julio.

  He peered out the window. “I don’t see much. We’d better go down. Besides, I’m hungry.”

  “You’re scared,” she said. It wasn’t an accusation; she saw it f
or the first time.

  He was stung.

  He was proud, very proud, and he was extremely angry. At times like this he looked so fierce that he reminded her of a bullfighter. But what was he going to fight today? Mossy carnitas?

  They went down together.

  When Julio approached the truck the gardeners pulled together like a football team in a huddle.

  “Hola” he tried in his deep tones.

  The group of them shifted together, hiding something.

  Julio walked up to the truck’s order window, pretending nonchalance. A fat woman moved inside the truck. Julio studied the list of foods, a stupefied expression sweeping his face. Next to words, in a language Sally didn’t recognize—must be a dialect—there were pictures.

  Some of the pictures were whimsical, or at least unlikely. She felt a sudden and strong throb at the base of her spine, as if something wanted to get out. And right then she was hungry.

  Julio looked repulsed by the menu, though, she thought, there was enough red meat on it to satisfy the average Argentinean. Of course, she thought with a sigh, he’s very fastidious…

  She turned her attention back to the menu. And her hunger grew so strong that, for once, she forgot about Julio.

  A side of meat, probably a beefsteak, on a bed of moss, a melon, a sandwich decorated with dewy rose buds, the grilled paws of an unidentifiable animal in a sloppy sauce, and a small bird that looked as though it would be all bones, like a quail, also surrounded by rose buds.

  The buyers pulled money out of their pockets and pushed it through the window. The side dish was something white or gray, like jelly, which the gardeners greedily sucked off their fingers or sopped up with…

  She couldn’t resist staring. She saw a heavy gardener dip meat into a bed of moss and rose petals and bring it up—bloody—to his lips. Goo, the consistency of a jelly, dripped from meat, pallid as if it had spoiled.

  Instead of putting the meat directly in his mouth, he stuffed it in the soaked moss and chewed, bloody sauce streaming down his chin, then he packed rose petals in his cheeks like tobacco.

  Sally’s stomach churned. But—perversely—she craved that gray, mossy, bloody jelly.

  She looked at Julio for reassurance, but his eyes were far away, pretending to stare at the menu. She reached for his hand, but he pulled it away. He was macho, and she knew he didn’t want the men to see his woman hanging on him. The nature of their relationship hung in the air like cartoon-bubbles over their heads: What’s he doing here, in this mansion? Did she buy him that watch, those clothes?

  Julio approached the food window.

  Out of the corner or her eye, Sally saw Guadalupe’s worried face, shaped like an O, watching through one of the house’s many windows.

  “I’ll have the special,” Julio said with a nod at the list.

  “No. Eh, eh, senora,” said the heavy lady. Then she slammed the plastic window shut.

  All the gardeners watched Julio.

  “Hey! I’m not a senora!” Suddenly that seemed the most important thing.

  The gardeners laughed.

  Before Julio could say anything, he saw Senor Manuel’s smile. His front teeth were gone now, where the windows had been. There were black gums there, and they moved with the slow undulations of worms.

  Julio ran.

  ***

  He told her he had to take a nap, then refused to talk.

  She tried to work and couldn’t.

  Maybe Julio was right. He made bad jokes, but she was more scared of the Mexicans than they were of her. And why not? She was a woman. Twenty terror points right there. They must have guessed that Julio didn’t live in the big house, that she didn’t have a real husband. At best she was an anomaly. At worst she was a piece of pussy.

  She called the company.

  “I’m not happy with the gardeners. They, ah, destroyed some expensive plants. I don’t want them to come back.”

  “What?”

  “Well…they’re fired. I’m sorry.”

  She took a breath and nuzzled Julio. You could never really understand another culture regardless of the politics you pretended to believe. And Julio could never understand her. But that was okay, she supposed.

  She smiled and bit his brown neck.

  ***

  They were woken by the sound of a leaf blower.

  Julio frowned. “I thought you were going to fire them.”

  “I did. I don’t know what they—”

  Enough, came an interrupting thought. She leaped from bed and stormed downstairs.

  Signor Manuel greeted her: “Hola, senorita!”

  He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses and his pupils looked tight, constricted; he squinted as if he couldn’t bear the sun.

  She gave him a stiff nod.

  “Today we finish the job.”

  “Oh, well. Thank you.”

  He pointed to the Ficus. His men were already circling it.

  “Well, I appreciate that.” She fished in her pocket for money as he turned away.

  Julio suggested she look on the bright side. It was a good deal. And it was almost over.

  She’d been assertive.

  “That’s quite a bargain! Worth the extra day. Awesome. Maybe they saw you wearing the purple skirt, hmm? The one I like, the tight one.” He reached for her.

  ***

  It was a noisy affair, and Julio stayed out by the pool for most of it. Before it was over, unable, he said, to relax, Julio went home.

  She watched from the upstairs window as the men shoveled and hacked and drilled; thick, arm-like pieces of root emerged like the tentacles of a squid.

  Do those arms still live under the house?

  Probably.

  She shuddered.

  She needed to talk to someone, but Guadalupe had claimed an emergency and taken the rest of the day off. Gardeners aside, she was alone. When Guadalupe had said “goodbye,” Sally thought she heard a whispered, “Be careful, Miss Sally.” But she wasn’t at all sure she wasn’t going mad, hearing things.

  The removal of the stump went on past sundown, the gardeners working and sweating under moonlight. Strange, the neighbors didn’t complain.

  The moon was high when they finally packed up and left.

  She stepped outside barefoot and approached the hole where the stump had been. The excision was so clean she had to search hard find it. She peered at a neat trellis, pressed perfectly into the hole, the kind of thing you’d cover a foxhole with. By moonlight the hole seemed vast, bottomless. Carefully, she surveyed the lawn. Somehow, they’d cleared the entire mess.

  Strange.

  The next day Julio came over; he and Sally luxuriated in bed. For once they didn’t talk about the gardeners, apart from his whistle of approval when she told him about all the work they’d done for a mere $50.

  When he was asleep, she stuck her face out the window. The thick gardener stood below, scratching his hairy belly and beckoning . . .

  Beckoning.

  Sally screamed.

  Julio jumped out of bed; but when he got to the window there was no one outside.

  I’m seeing things. I’m going—

  “You’re just nervous,” he said, as if reading her mind. “This has been stressful for you.”

  “Do you think the roots will die? I hope so.”

  “You hope?” He made “the-monster-will-get-you” noises: “The rooooooots! They Live Inside! Whoo-ooo—”

  “I heard something. A noise.”

  He tried to tickle her, but she pushed him away. “Really, I did.”

  He reached for her again. He didn’t like to be put off. He grabbed her ass and screamed.

  “Sally! My Jesus! What is that? Is that a . . . tail? A stub of a tail? Jesus God! You have a…it’s hairy!”

  She grinned, and her teeth looked sharp.

  “Ka,” was all she said.

  He ran.

  She looked down at him from the balcony. Outside, he was blinking, making vague,
panicked calling sounds into the night air.

  They were on him. A hand—no, a claw, something scaled—came down in front of his eyes. Another claw raked, closing his mouth forever. He struggled hard, but he couldn’t stop them. Choking on wet rose petals they stuffed in his mouth, he tried to draw breath. No use. Moss pressed up and into his nostrils, cutting off his last gasps of life.

  After ten minutes of silence, Sally stood. She touched the thing that grew out of her spine—gingerly at first, then with confidence, even affection. It had soft little hairs.

  The night sky relaxed her eyes.

  They crawled into the room, some of them on all fours, others leaning, the tips of their claws where fingers used to be, clacking at the air like mandibles. The stumps of their tails protruded from rags, teeth pushed from gray gums like spears. They had padded hands, like moles’ paws.

  She was dragged outside and pushed toward the hole. They pulled her down. And down.

  Down.

  Fresh earth tumbled around her.

  Reaching a huge burrow, she saw Julio’s body slumped in a corner. His mouth stuffed to suffocating with rosebuds, he wasn’t breathing.

  She had no more use for him.

  But they had a use for her in their mole night-world.

  She couldn’t see much as they prepared her: wide black pupils, a pile of torn clothes, broken sunglasses, and tunnels that led to warrens.

  She felt the press of stiff fur against her body.

  Sharp claws raked her legs, and she smelled decay. Not human decay, or that of an animal—it was the sweet decay of roses long dead, and the waft of the unknown...

  She was home.

  When they were done making her right, she went to the handsome brown body and joined the feast.

  They pulled the trellis shut. This was their world.

  ***

  The neighbors’ lights clicked on once, then went dead.

  Amy Wallace is the author of more than fifteen books, including (with her family) the number-one New York Times bestselling Book of Lists, which has sold over eight million copies worldwide and spawned four additional bestselling editions. She also wrote The Psychic Healing Book, with Bill Henkin, now in print for more than thirty years. Family collaborations include The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (recently re-released in an updated edition by Feral House), Significa (based on a long-running Parade magazine column), and The Book of Predictions. She co-authored a biography, The Two: The Story of the Original Siamese Twins, with her father, the world-famous novelist Irving Wallace. Her second biography was The Prodigy: A Biography of William James Sidis, the World’s Greatest Child Prodigy. She also wrote the acclaimed erotic novel, Desire. Among her most recent works are the controversial memoir Sorcerer’s Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda, The Official Punk Rock Book of Lists (with Handsome Dick Manitoba), and The Book of Lists: Horror (with Del Howison and Scott Bradley), which earned her a nomination for the prestigious Bram Stoker Award. Amy shares her birthday, July 3, with Franz Kafka and Mississippi John Hurt. She lives in Los Angeles with two cats, Hank and Bella, who serve as her editors by lying across the keyboard at critical moments.