Appalachian Galapagos

by Ochse, Weston

  "That won't happen."

  "Why not?" asked Dicky. The muscle of his shoulder's tensed as he prepared to fight his way out. "You gonna stop me? You gonna kill me?"

  "No. I'm going to offer you an alternative."

  "A bribe?" laughed Dicky.

  "Not a bribe. An alternative. I'll give you a choice. You see, I can feel your loss. I can see in your eyes the love you've lost. You want to do something about it, don't you?"

  "Of course I do. If I had a gun, I'd shoot you right where you stand."

  "Getting angry with me is the wrong answer. I'm merely the facilitator. You might as well become angry at the sun for setting. What I did was what had to be done. No. I shouldn't be the target of your anger. I'm not the one you should hate." Elias gestured at The Low Man who was now feeding on his opponent. "He is."

  Dicky's eighth, ninth and tenth fights were also against hitchhikers. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of them, as if there was a segment of society that desired to become victim. He'd felt guilty at first. It was so easy to kill—to win. The secret was to dehumanize. He became animal, forgetting about love and the complications of compassion. He became instinct. He became the snarl that curled around inviting teeth.

  By the time his tenth fight was over, he'd become all animal. For two complete days his humanity had been forgotten. He remembered chewing fingers and swallowing muscle. He remembered lapping at congealing blood, chomping blow flies like popcorn.

  Then he'd dreamed of Willy Pete and became human once again. He'd spent the next few days alternately praying and crying, trying to understand this evolution he had undergone. He'd chosen to be what he was, but condemned himself for it. He'd killed animals. He'd killed men. He was butchering his own soul.

  And for what? All to extract retribution from the thing that had ruined his life?

  It was with these too-human thoughts that he'd entered his eleventh fight and they'd almost killed him. For it was humanity that allowed him to feel love. It was love that allowed him to feel empathy. It was empathy that made him feel sorry for his eleventh opponent, the grizzled hunter who'd been caught poaching deer in the pine nursery where they held the yearly Kudzu Festival. And in that second's hesitation when he'd empathized, the old man had been able to escape his clutches and reach the baseball bat at the other end of the pit.

  Dicky had paid with pain. He'd barely managed to chew through the man's defenses. He'd almost died at the cusp of reaching his goal. It was only by descending into the taste of flesh that he found the animal within.

  "So what are you saying?" asked Dicky Sims, pacing the length of the billiard room. The fight between The Low Man and the hitchhiker had been over for an hour, yet the fear and rage still flowed through him. "You saying that I should punish that freak. What did you call him? The Low Man?"

  "I'm saying that you don't want to punish any of us," said Elias from where he sat in a large, red leather chair.

  "The hell I don't," Dicky snapped. "I want nothing more than to see you punished."

  "No. Punishment is nothing. What would you have them do? Arrest us?"

  "Yes."

  "Throw us in jail?"

  "Yes."

  "Maybe even get a death sentence, do the kickin' chicken in an electric chair or sleep to death in a gas chamber?"

  "Yes. Yes. Yes," Dicky said, emphasizing each affirmative by punching his hand.

  "And that would satisfy you?"

  "Yes."

  "Then you didn't love your friend."

  "What?"

  "I think that you thought you loved him, but it's clear that you never did. You're like all the rest of the world who profess to love. Instead of loving, you loved the way he made you feel about yourself. You loved his acceptance of you. You loved the times that you spent together. You loved the—"

  "You don't know what you're talking about," said Dicky, his voice cracking. "I loved him. I loved him," he repeated, the second attempt full of memory.

  "Just look at you. You tell me that you're angry. You tell me you're enraged at the loss of your friend. You tell me that you loved him. You even seem to feel that something needs to be done, yet with all the options presented to you, you continue to maintain your civility. You cling to your humanity like it's a Linus blanket."

  "I'm talking about punishing you. I'm talking about killing you. Isn't that angry enough?"

  "What's the difference between punishment and revenge?"

  "I don't know."

  "For one," said Elias, standing and walking towards the broad window behind his desk, "with one you get to dictate, with the other you can participate."

  The room was silent for several minutes as Dicky thought about this and Elias stared out upon his mountain. Finally, the younger man turned. He cocked his head and asked, "But can't a person participate in both of them?"

  "Ahh," said Elias turning, a broad smile upon his face. "Yes, he may. But then it's called something different entirely. We call that retribution."

  "Mumbo Jumbo. That's all this is. You're just trying to confuse me so that I won't figure out a way to make you pay."

  "This is not Mumbo Jumbo, Dicky Sims. This is all about making us pay. That's what retribution is. Retribution is a personalized form of justice where one may become a part of making the other pay."

  Dicky shook his head and placed his hands over his face.

  "Retribution," continued Elias, "allows you to come face to face with that which harmed you or yours and actively seek to bring about pain, both mental and true."

  "Stop."

  "Retribution is what a person who was in love embraces when the object of their love is harmed."

  "I said stop it. What would you have me do?"

  "What would you do, Dicky Sims? You said you wanted to punish. What I'm offering you is one better. I'm offering you a chance to do to The Low Man what he did to your friend."

  "I want to," said Dicky. "I really want to, but I—I'm afraid."

  "What you lack is Perfect Anger. What you lack is the understanding of what actually transpired."

  As Dicky stared up from the bottom of his own low place, Elias detailed the demise of Willy Pete. As the story progressed, Dicky began to feel angry. When it finally came to an end Dicky Sims was anger.

  When he crept through the door, a halo of light caught and blinded him. Squinting, he was unable see more than a foot in front of him. He didn't need to see to know that The Low Man was there, however. He could feel the other's deadness across the dirt of the pit like an ache he was unable to fill.

  Dicky shifted athletically on his low arms towards the place and heard the thing growl a welcome. He answered it with one of his own. He tried to look into the stands, but could not pierce the white veil of phosphorous light. The citizens of Jacob Mountain were like a single feral being, breathing in time to the hot humid wind.

  Lowering his shoulders, Dicky shifted his neck, feeling his muscles gather and bunch around vertebrae. He snapped his teeth twice and pawed at the ground behind him.

  Elias's voice erupted from the speakers hung high in the eaves. He spoke, but the struggle for Dicky to understand speech was too much. He'd descended fully into the world of creature and would probably never resurface. He was on a mission of retribution, and sometimes, sacrifice was a necessary price. He didn't need to understand the language to understand the meaning. By the excitement and surge of the crowd, Dicky knew the match was about to begin.

  Someone dimmed the lights to a soft yellow nimbus revealing The Low Man shuffling at the other edge of The Pit. Like a bull, he pawed at the ground and snorted, causing small gales of dust to spin in the air.

  Their eyes met, redemptive fury versus animal indifference. Muscles twitched in their faces. Elias finished speaking and the crowd hushed. Dicky felt hairs rise along his skin. A single drop of sweat slid from his hairless scalp and plunged into the dry earth.

  Then the squeal of an air horn punctured the silence and the two combatants launched the
mselves across The Pit. They met in a savage engagement of teeth and tearing skin. Sweat and blood whipped across the wooden façade of The Pit reaching the first few rows of spectators. The cheers of the crowd were drowned by the guttural oaths and screams of Dicky Sims and The Low Man.

  Each had the other on the stumps of his hind legs, front stumps struggling to propel the other onto his back, teeth snapping at pulsing jugulars. The Low Man was the first to latch on, his teeth snatching away an ear. The pain and sudden loss of equilibrium caused Dicky to stumble. He fell to his side, and as he did, The Low Man fell away.

  Dicky pulled himself up, but was hurled back as a head butted his side. He rolled and rolled, finally slamming against the far wall. Before he could move, teeth fastened on the skin beneath his arm, digging and consuming the soft tender tissue.

  Dicky screamed, and in that scream he found power. Using what was left of his legs, he gathered them beneath The Low Man and shoved, pushing the creature away before it could take another bite from him. The Low Man rolled and landed upright. Panting, he glared at Dicky, the open lipless maw a parody of a smile.

  According to Elias, Willy Pete had indeed fallen in the swollen river. Instead of drowning, he'd been pulled out about a quarter of a mile downstream unconscious by some of Elias's farmhands. A day later his friend had awoken. It was then that Elias had invited him to participate. At first Willy had been as Dicky had, incredulous that one would even ask. Then Elias had offered Willy a deal. He promised that he wouldn't seek out his best friend Dicky Sims. He promised that he'd allow his friend to live if only he'd join them. If he refused to join them, then he'd kill Willy outright and track Dicky down.

  Dicky limped to the center of The Pit. He rubbed the side of his head against the ground, pushing dirt into the space where his ear had been, using the earth as a coagulant. Blood trickled from the space beneath his arm. He'd been wounded, but he'd live. The Rotty had hurt him worse. If this was all The Low Man had, he had a chance.

  Elias admitted that Willy hadn't exactly jumped at the chance to sacrifice himself. Even when he'd been informed that there was absolutely no chance of survival, Willy had hesitated. In the end however, with a painless death at hand, Willy Pete had chosen to sacrifice himself and it was at the hand of The Low Man that he'd died, crying and in agony like the hitchhiker had done so many months ago when Dicky had been offered the deal.

  "Then what am I doing here?" Dicky had asked. "You made a deal with Willy. You promised him you wouldn't kill me."

  "We did indeed," Elias had replied. "We promised we wouldn't seek you out. In fact, you may leave anytime, Mr. Sims. You may even leave right now." He'd held up a finger. "But realize that if you leave, any chance at retribution will be forever lost and your friend's sacrifice will go unrequited."

  Dicky remembered the intensity of the guilt he'd felt at that moment.

  "I guess it all comes down to how much you loved him."

  Dicky feinted right then launched himself across the small space between them. He butted The Low Man in the shoulder, slid along his side and latched on to a calf. He snapped his jaw closed, gasping around the surge of blood and rank sweat as he bit deeply into the meat. He choked once, then reapplied his jaw.

  The Low Man kicked out hard, trying to dislodge Dicky. It wasn't until the fourth try that Dicky was forced to let go. Still, The Low Man's back was to him.

  Dicky dodged the flailing heel, and spun. With a scream of victory he launched himself onto the back of The Low Man and began to use both of his arms to pound, bringing the stumps up and down upon the back of the other's head and neck. Within seconds, The Low Man sagged then fell. Dicky continued pounding, bringing his stumps down upon the back of the creature that had killed his best friend with all the diminishing force he had. Each impact brought a shiver from the body of The Low Man, until finally, Dicky sagged as well, hunching over the still form of The Low Man, exhausted.

  Minutes passed before Dicky had enough energy to move. In that time, the crowd had quieted, waiting for some finality to the match. Dicky too, needed some finality. His victory seemed hollow. He felt no different. He'd beaten The Low Man, but the system that had created him was still around.

  Sitting astride The Low Man, Dicky turned him over. The Low Man was still alive, but barely. His eyes swam in and out of focus. His breath wheezed from a collapsed lung. His mouth hung open, small bubbles dribbling from the sides.

  Then The Low Man surged upwards. Dicky screamed into the mouth of The Low Man as teeth bit into both of his lips. He felt pain then numbness as his pain-crazed eyes stared into the two calm orbs an inch away from his own. Instead of sawing or biting deeper, The Low Man merely held Dicky there.

  Like a kiss, they were locked together and forced to stare into the eyes of the other. Dicky calmed as he realized that The Low Man wasn't going to kill him. He wasn't certain how he knew, but the longer he stared into the two blue eyes before him, he knew that this was no crazed animal. Instead, he saw a certain tired humanity that had been beaten and subverted. He saw echoes of pain and loss. He recognized the tiredness of a life poorly lived.

  Had The Low Man been like him once?

  Dicky felt the tongue of The Low Man caress his own. His eyes widened as The Low Man nodded. For a brief second he felt love and gave love in return. No one else on the earth would understand them. There was no one else like them.

  Then tentatively at first, Dicky began to bite down. The Low Man nodded. Dicky applied more pressure and watched as The Low Man's eyes closed with the intensity of the pain. A tear escaped and The Low Man's jaw released Dicky's lips from the embrace. They hung, barely attached to Dicky's face. Then with a snap, Dicky came away with the other's tongue and watched as the blood seeped and pooled and The Low Man drowned.

  Dicky Sims sat back and spat the tongue to the earth. He had won.

  Now what? Would he become The New Low Man? A thought streaked through him. He could end it all right now. All he had to do was place his face upon the ruined mess of the other's mouth and eat. Eat and inhale what was left of The Low Man and they would both die. He could smother in his own retribution, keeping Elias from using him ever again.

  In a single grand gesture he could end hundreds of years of The Pit, for without the presence of a Low Man, what would The Pit be? It was The Low Men that made it special, of that he was certain.

  Then the image of Elias standing proud and true interjected itself. Elias smiling. Elias drinking. Elias enjoying an upright life, undisturbed by the all the possibilities that retribution provided.

  Dicky found himself unable to kill himself. His retribution was incomplete. If there was even a microscopic chance to convert Elias into a Low Man, he had to remain alive. He had to wait and watch.

  He would have smiled with the irony of it all, but one couldn't smile without lips. He reminded himself that it was the smile that separated people and animals.

  So it was as an animal that he leered lipless up into the stands of The Pit. The crowd erupted in applause and Elias raised his arms in victory.

  Dicky nodded, one Low Man to another.

  With Quiet Violence

  Melissa had already begun to melt. A pool of water ran from her tiny feet onto the wooden floor. Her five-year-old body stood rigid before the fireplace, hands held to her side like a statue, fingers blue and caked with crystals of ice. She wore the same white dress she'd worn in her coffin.

  Michael's face looked haggard when he spoke, the face of a man hanging onto the edge of cliff by only his bloodied fingernails, eyes deadened with the resignation of his fate. "You aren't going to believe this, but I demanded that God give her to me. My faith was nearly gone."

  I watched the water drop from Melissa onto the floor in soft plunks. A muffled ripping sound emitted from her body, a noise like her flesh was tearing apart under the ice. The firelight caused shadows to dance across her shiny face hypnotically.

  "She came back to me, Richard," Michael said, his fingers running
lovingly over her icy skin. "I can't believe it. God gave her back to me."

  "You don't know that," I said, feeling repulsed by the dead girl. I noticed her eyes moved slightly. "We don't know what the hell this thing is. God doesn't give people back."

  It was painful staring into the face of Michael O'Connor after he'd lost his little girl. When I looked into his eyes, I was always overwhelmed. They made me feel like I was staring into a window of a blazing house, watching someone burn to death—only the person was just standing there stoically letting the flames devour his blistering flesh.

  "It's Melissa," he said. "She is from God, Richard. And don't call her a thing."

  Looking at Michael by the flickering fire, his dead little girl standing before the flames, I could see the astonishing transformation. Gone were his pudgy chipmunk-like cheeks—replaced by sharp, severe cheekbones. The eyes which at one time had twinkled with a mischievous gleam were dark and gloomy, an edge of menace in the pupils as if he had just crawled from the battlefield of a particularly brutal war. His frame was wiry and emaciated, nothing like the rotund form of only two years before. His hair, once full and curly, was shaved down to his scalp. Michael held the look of someone on the verge of shrieking in anguish before folding to the floor in a quivering fetal position.

  Melissa died in a drowning accident. Only a year before that, his wife, Lisa, had died from an agonizingly slow bout with cancer. Melissa had always been a very special child, so wise for her years that it was frightening. When I first heard she was dead, I broke down and cried right where I stood.

  We had gone to the cabin to escape Michael's grief, to get him away from all that reminded him of his lost little girl. I don't think he had left the state of Arkansas in his whole life, so I felt the change of scenery in the Pennsylvania mountains would do him good. Though being here had not erased his grief, he seemed more relaxed than I'd seen him in a long while.

  We found her in the snow outside the cabin, standing rigidly in the cold wind. The moonlight made her blue skin shimmer like the stars above. Snowflakes swirled around her. I couldn't even breathe. I was so stunned.