Doomsdays

by Jeffrey Thomas

  Brice sighed, looked down at his expensive, now paint-spattered athletic shoes. He found a composed tone. "I feel good about myself. We all do. I'm sorry you don't understand that."

  "Yeah, I talked to some of your new friends, looking for you. It's like some kind of a blissed-out cult in here, Brice. What is there – some kind of pollution still in the walls or the water pipes or something that has you all drugged? You were making great money as a web designer...it's what you do! This --" she swept an arm around her "-- this is just...nutty!"

  Brice lifted chilly eyes to the woman, and seemed to see her from a fresh perspective. She had been born into a wealthy family. Had gone to a good college. Ran the computer department for one of Worcester's major hospitals. She had never had a blister on a finger in her life. Look at her, as perfect and lifeless as a glossy magazine ad -- smelling too strong like a perfume ad – her short hair like a wig, not a dot of paint or speck of plaster on her. Office girl, that was all.

  Looking down her nose at working men like him.

  "I have work to do, Gwen," he told her icily.

  "I see. Work." She snorted the word. At that moment, there was a rattle behind the wall, like a metallic snarl, as if a heavy chain or pulley had been set into motion, as if gears had started to turn and gnash their hungry teeth -- a rhythmic sound like the churning legs of an immense mechanical spider on the other side of those bricks, crawling up from some dark forgotten place of grease and rust. Gwen visibly flinched at the loud clang which followed and concluded the grinding. She looked back to Brice, who showed no reaction, and added shakily, "Well, fine, Brice. Whatever makes you happy. But I hope you know what you're doing."

  "I appreciate your concern. Now, if you don't mind." And he flicked his eyes meaningfully toward the wall, where one of their punch clocks was ticking precious time away. He would have to work through his second afternoon break to make up for this loss.

  "Goodbye, Brice."

  "Right," he said. He watched her leave (he did take in her nyloned legs; office girls were at least good for that). Then, satisfied, he returned to his job. He busied his hands, stained darkly in paint like two industrious ants. He disengaged his mind, entered a deeper communion with life.

  His senses again grew keen. He inhaled the smell of the paint, he felt the texture and weight of solid matter, his muscles pleasantly tired from the day's honest labors. He sweated, he felt alive, he felt valuable; he made things, and he would leave things behind him. He felt like he was rebuilding his very own body.

  His mind was full of neatly cut shelves, stacked with new bright thoughts, all freshly painted.

  And behind the wall, in a more soothing, contented sound than before, a metallic rhythm again began to churn...lulling him, singing to him – like a titanic mechanical heart, staggering back to life.

  The End

  Flesh Wound

  "Quit complainin', man, it was only a .22."

  "I been shot, man...were you shot?"

  "You nailed his slanty-eyed ass, didn't ya?"

  Petey and Dave had their arms slung around each other's shoulders when they banged into their apartment, just as they had after many Saturday nights spent in the streets, except tonight they weren't supporting each other's drunken weight – Dave had been shot, and he had been moaning and whimpering and cursing the fact ever since. Petey helped Dave lower himself onto the couch. He sank low into the sharp springs that almost ripped through its thin surface.

  "It still doesn't hurt?"

  "No, man, it must've hit a nerve. I'll probably be paralyzed for life!"

  "You didn't get shot in the spine, dude." Petey couldn't help but laugh. "Look, it's hardly even bleeding. Look what you did to him, huh?"

  They had spotted the one they called Sai walking alone...purely accidental, though they'd wanted him for some time. He was the leader, and here he was alone, vulnerable. They'd tailed him into an alley. Petey had a knife, Dave had his snub .38. In the alley Dave had shouted out at Sai's back and opened up on him. Sai went down, wounded. From the ground he fired back. Dave was struck in the leg but somehow, miraculously, remained on his feet. Dave's second bullet hit Sai in the cheek.

  "Chop suey," said Petey now, remembering the result. They hadn't found any drugs on him. They hadn't found the gun he'd fired, either. Probably dropped it in the thick layer of alley trash -- they hadn't taken the time to search. Bigshot Sai, always bragging he didn't carry a piece, didn't need one with his Kung Fu crap and all that mystical shit.

  "I'll go get Doc Cool," said Petey, handing Dave a bottle of rum. All out of Coke.

  "What if I need a real doctor?"

  "Look, man, it's nothing. Maybe you hit a couple little nerves – they'll grow back! You can't go to a real doctor; you wasted somebody and they'll find out! Doc Cool can handle it, and he'll give you medication they've never even heard of."

  "Well go get him, hurry, it might start hurting or I might go into shock."

  "Go into shock. Man, you don't know anything about medicine, do ya?" Petey chuckled and left the apartment.

  "Oh, man," Dave moaned. Alone with his shot leg, already he felt nauseous. His right leg, in the front of his thigh. The jeans were bloody but not as much as he would have thought they'd be. But the bullet hadn't passed clean through and that might mean Doc Cool would want to go digging. Oh, man.

  Dave undid his belt, unzipped his jeans and slowly, gingerly worked them down, afraid that the tiniest wrong move would trigger an explosion of pain. None came. The wound was revealed but he did his best to ignore it until he had his sneakers and then his jeans fully off.

  The puncture was a disorienting sight to see in the flesh of his body he knew so well. It didn't belong. He wiped the blood away with a sofa pillow and saw that none more was leaking. This left the hole looking all the more strange; so clean, so black, as natural looking an aperture as one of his nostrils. That was what made it look so unnatural -- its naturalness. A bold, arrogant invader pretending it belonged.

  "Looks bigger than a .22 to me," Dave whimpered, and swallowed some rum. Should he pour some on the wound to disinfect it? He couldn't -- he was afraid it would pour into the hole, inside him. He reached for the remote control of their stolen stereo TV, leaning forward toward the coffee table.

  Dave felt a cool breeze against the underside of his right arm and sat back abruptly, startled. In leaning forward, the underside of his right arm had come close to his punctured thigh.

  "Oh man, this isn't worth it...no way...I wish we didn't even run into Sai tonight, I don't care." Dave knew what he must do. He must hold his palm over the black bullet hole to see if a chilly little breeze had truly issued out of it. But he sat there staring at it, both his hands well away from it, as if it were a scorpion poised on his leg.

  The hole looked bigger the longer he stared at it. A .22. huh? It looked to be the size of a dime, to Dave. The rim puckered down into it. And not a drop of new blood. A nostril. Maybe it had breathed out air like a nostril, too, huh? Yeah right. But how the hell did he know what bullet wounds did and didn’t do? Except to other people.

  Dave reached out his right hand to it -- the scorpion, as if to pet it -- his palm held flat and level.

  And now his hand was directly over it, four inches above it.

  Dave yelled. He jumped up from the couch as though propelled by its springs, almost pitched across the coffee table. But what was he going to do -- run away from his leg? And in any case he found that it was now totally numb, wouldn't support his weight. He toppled back onto the sofa, whimpering.

  The breeze against the palm of his right hand had been more than cool; it was chilly. And, it would seem, continuous.

  "Oh, man, Pete, c'mon man, hurry!"

  The fat old bastard upstairs began pounding on the ceiling as always after a Saturday night on the streets, when they laughed and cranked up the tunes. "Shut up!" Dave shouted back at him. He'd shoot his .38 through the ceiling, the way he felt now.

  He looked b
ack at the hole. The hole looked back at him.

  It was bigger, the diameter of a half dollar, but before Dave could react to that curious development he saw the eye. It was only there for a moment; it swam up out of the blackness and pressed against the peephole to glare at him a moment before receding. But he'd seen that the flesh around it was a ghastly blue, and the lid was slanted almond-shaped in what was called the oriental fold.

  So Dave yelled some more, and the man upstairs stomped again. The ceiling shook, things rattled. Dave had clapped the bloody sofa pillow over his thigh but hadn't attempted getting off the divan again. "Pete! Help, somebody help me!" The ceiling rumbled. "Help me, you fat-ass; call a doctor, hurry, hurry, hurry!"

  "Shut up or I'll call the police, you druggie punk!" a voice boomed from above.

  Dave felt the pillow move under his hand. He started to pull it away but it resisted. He had to jerk it roughly to free it, and then he saw the teeth which had been gripping it. The hole was the size of a beer coaster and a mouth was pressed against it from the other side, the flesh blue around the blue lips, which were curled back dog-like from the black gums and yellow teeth. The teeth snapped a few times before the mouth receded. Blackness. The chill breeze was now a continuous gust Dave felt across his face, stirring his hair. A distant whistling sound like a desert sand storm came from within.

  "God help me, help me!"

  "Shut up!" boomed the man upstairs.

  "Call the police, call the police!"

  "All right, wise guy, I will!" Stamping footsteps moving across the ceiling.

  Fingers curled over the puckered rim of the crater in Dave's hairy thing. They were blue fingers with blackened nails. Whatever was in there, behind there, was just clinging, maybe supporting itself.

  Tears ran from Dave's eyes.

  The hand shot out of the wound; Dave sat back hard to protect his throat. The black nails raked down his chest. Blubbering crazily, Dave fought to stuff the hand down with the sofa pillow; the fingers caught it, a brief tug-o'-war ensued. The blue hand won. The pillow was quickly squeezed through the hole, now the size of the round mirror Dave snorted lines from. The pillow was gone inside him.

  Dave couldn't formulate an exorcism any better than he could a prayer. All he chanted, mantra-like, was, "Go away go away go away go away..."

  The top of a head rose from the hole but jammed, the hole not wide enough to accommodate the entire thing. Black glossy hair was plastered wetly to the skull, blue forehead showed. After a few unsuccessful butts the head submerged again.

  The rum bottle went flying in Dave's mad flurry to pull his jacket to him. He had to throw himself sideways across the couch to yank it from the coffee table rather than simply lean over his leg to retrieve it and thus near his throat to the hole...

  The cardboard Halloween skeleton hanging by a string from the lamp cord above danced a jig to the frigid gusting wind from the cave of his leg.

  He had the jacket, pulled it to him, sat up. The hammer of the .38 hooked the lining of his pocket as he fought to wrench it out. The lining tore. His satin jacket. He didn't care; he had a hole in his thigh that spanned its entire upper surface, curving down either side. He should have seen bone. The inner walls of red and purple muscle. But beyond the puckered rim was only utter blackness...whistling.

  But now there was something...

  The head rose again, and this time cleared the manhole of the wound. The shoulders alone jammed it now.

  Sai grinned at Dave. His own bullet hole in the cheek (and the exit pit in the rear of his head) had healed nicely. Not to be dissuaded, however, Dave shot him in the face again.

  An eye was punched in, leaving an entire socket open. A thick black syrup sputtered out. Sai threw his head back and wailed, gritted his yellow teeth and whipped his head madly from side to side. Dave shot him again, this time in the forehead. More black syrup. The head sank away, the wail sinking with it. Farther. Farther. Distant, like the arctic whistling.

  Then gone.

  Dave fired twice more down into the hole for good measure, laughing. The revolver clicked empty. He laughed. What would the neighors think?

  Doc Cool would have to cut his leg off, that was all. Then burn it so the door was gone. That was all. The medications would make all of that no problem. Petey would take charge of everything...

  The hole had stopped spreading. Good thing, Dave laughed to himself, or else his leg would just fall off anyway. Still didn't hurt. Hell, he wouldn't even need any pain killers, really. But he wouldn't tell Doc Cool that, of couse. Yeah, must have hit some nerves, huh? Sai and his Kung Fu crap. Kung Fu that, pal. You can't beat cold lead.

  "Oh man," Dave laughed. And laughed. And laughed...

  * * *

  On the landing, Petey and Doc Cool heard sirens. Doc Cool looked to Petey, frowning. "They're coming this way."

  "No they're not, man, they're just passing."

  "They're coming. You been snagged." Doc Cool lunged past him.

  Petey grabbed after him but Doc Cool wrenched his sleeve away. Petey said, "Come on, man, help me get him down to your car!"

  "You ain't coming in my car." Doc Cool was pounding down the stairs. "I ain't even here."

  Petey turned and leapt at the door to his apartment.

  "Dave," he blurted, bursting in, "come on, man, we gotta fly! The cops...whoa!"

  Whoa was right.

  Dave was there on the couch were he'd left him, though not as he'd left him. He was doubled up over his legs; at first, for a moment, Petey had thought with his head between his legs. Actually, he realized, Dave's head was in his leg. One of his arms, somehow, was in there, too, almost up to the shoulder. Even as Petey watched, Dave curled in further over his leg. He stuffed his shoulder into the hole. One distended vertebra after another marched slowly, patiently into that tunnel. Dave curled yet further. He was getting to be a ball, a snake tightly coiled in upon itself, coiling tighter. Or rather, swallowing its own tail.

  Petey passed out, the idiot. Crashed to the floor for the police to find and cart away. He missed the grand finale, and would later, in prison, only be able to dream, to imagine, to guess at – endlessly – what it looked like as Dave finally finished swallowing himself.

  Which is what had to have happened.

  The police found nothing of Dave.

  The End

  Elephants Weep

  As he pulled into the parking lot – empty except for dunes of autumn leaves like gold scales shed from the waning sun – David recalled that the Dearborn Heights Zoo had been home to Ivory, the albino elephant. He also recalled that Ivory had passed away a year or two ago.

  His car nosed into a parking space close enough to the admission booth that he could see it was dark, unmanned. He checked the time on his dashboard. It could be past closing time, he supposed, but the more likely explanation for the desolation of the parking lot and the closed-up appearance of the booth was that the zoo had died along with its greatest draw.

  Still, David let himself out from his car if only to stretch his arms and back in the open, cool air. Splayed fingers bracing the base of his spine, he wandered closer to the booth, and now he could see around its edge. A chain was slung in the air across the path that led into the zoo, and from its center hung a sign which read: NO TRESPASSING. POLICE TAKE NOTICE.

  Had he been to this zoo as a boy? He couldn’t recall. David was only aware of Ivory through the newspapers. He wasn’t even sure whether he had ever passed through Dearborn Heights before. Returning home from the hotel and the convention, he’d become lost. No maps in the car; he got lost reading a map more readily than he did driving. Finally asking directions at a gas station where he’d bought a coffee, he learned he’d been going south when he should have been going north, so at least he knew he was pointed in the correct general direction now. But his back had cried out for a rest, even if the afternoon was soon to bleed away.

  The sign hanging from the inadequate barricade rocked slightly in the
chill breeze. David stood at the chain gazing further into the tree-enclosed zoo, which seemed to have the mood of a wooded urban park. He supposed it was as dangerous at night as an urban park, as well. Junkies, vandals, thugs and their equally tough girlfriends stealing into dark places to rut. But it wasn’t dark yet, and the nocturnal creatures had probably not yet emerged. Beyond the chain, he sensed only utter silence, a forlorn emptiness.

  All was cool shadow beyond the chain, the hissing of the wind through leaves sounding to him like a distant surf...which is always a beguiling sound. David lit a cigarette, glanced over his shoulder at the parking lot and his lonely vehicle, peered along the blocked path once again. Without even a conscious decision to do so, David walked back to his car, retrieved his suit jacket, slipped it on, locked up, and returned to the chain. He stepped over it.

  Cigarette in one hand, half-drunk coffee in the other, he strolled the entrance path, which passed by trailer-like restrooms that were labeled LIONS and LIONESSES. He groaned inwardly. Why not “Cocks” and “Hens,” he thought, taking a sip of his lukewarm coffee.

  The path opened up into a small area with shuttered snack stands, a scattering of picnic tables, and a few miniature carnival rides whose bright colors looked almost tragically nostalgic in the gray light. There was some black graffiti sprayed on the snack stands’ shutters. Indecipherable, arcane-looking symbols, jagged and ugly, which David didn’t like looking at.

  As a boy he had loved trips to the zoo; one of the two he best recalled was also closed down now. His mother would point to a lion or giraffe and say, “That’s from our country, son. That animal lives where we come from.” But David was an African-American who had never been to Africa and never would, any more than his father or even his grandfather had been there. Sometimes he felt he existed on the narrow hyphen between the words African and American. As a well-educated black man with a good job at the turn of the twenty-first century, he considered himself caught in a kind of limbo: not white, and not the streetwise, angry black man some would expect him to be. Though divorced, he had a good relationship with his two children and was a solid part of their lives. But both children were academic, scholarly, and black classmates frequently teased them about it, labeled them white wannabes. It exasperated David, who couldn’t understand why one black kid wouldn’t want to see another make his mind sharp and his prospects bright. At least David, when he was the only black kid in his high school, had merely been ignored and friendless.