Murderland

by Garrett Cook

  She kisses him, puts her hand on his thigh and begins to rub it. Her hand moves beyond the thigh and it squeezes quite shamelessly. She licks her lips, and he, in turn traces his tongue across them. He puts his hand on hers. Whispers in her ear just as seductively as I whispered in his.

  “Maybe we should go back to your place.”

  They get in her car and she gives him directions. They park outside of her building and he looks up at where she lives. Second floor, overlooking the fire escape. A real dream. It couldn’t possibly be any more convenient than this. Jeremy hates elevators. Godless Jack Cavanaugh in “The Art of Reap” points out that obviously elevators and security cameras are the psychopomp’s worst enemies. One of those awful books that Cass shoved down his throat. He kept on insisting that he wasn’t into them, but he loves her, so he read them. Picked up a hint or two from the master, the superstar, the man who made murder higher rated than baseball, football and pro wrestling combined. He winces, remembering where he was taking his strategy from. He uses that book too often for his liking.

  She brings him up to the apartment. Whites and pinks. Lots of lace. Too much lace. The sofa has a ridiculous floral pattern. It looks like she resides in a Bed, Bath & Beyond. Jeremy gags.

  “Nice place,” he says.

  She smiles, and, stumbling, places her hand on his shoulder as much for balance as contact.

  “I’m going to go change into something slinky and cute. Can you amuse yourself for a minute?”

  “Of course, beautiful.”

  As she disappears into her bedroom, he opens up the briefcase and takes out the syringe and a pair of latex gloves. He stands barefoot quietly outside the bedroom door. She walks out , and the syringe greets her. We grab her by the throat and choke her. In a matter of moments she is getting very weak and sluggish. My eyes grow wide and I choke her for a bit. Just me, because sometimes I need to do it. This isn’t pleasure, no. We synchronize ourselves and soon are acting seamlessly together. We have made ourselves a cohesive, fully functioning unit. She finally falls.

  The valium in the syringe could kill a grizzly, but until it sets in, the strangling is necessary. She is most likely already dead, but Jeremy needs to make sure that the little Dark One isn’t already in there, able to crawl out on its own. This is a legitimate and very sensible fear since Dark Ones are like cockroaches, able to survive most anything. He makes the cut and we reach in, great surgical team that we are. Filthy yellow cunt. Filthy filthy filthy. Little mommy we think. No children now. No noisy angry poisonous Dark Ones. He feels many cries go silent. Real child? Real infant? Real mother? The children at the library were different, hers would be, well…

  Jeremy calms himself and removes the uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes, along with her hands, the only part he made contact with. He hates using the meat cleaver. Everything then goes into the trash compactor. He carves a letter H on her head. It stands for nothing, but he does this to every tenth victim to help maintain the illusion that he is multiple reapers. The place stinks so he reaches into the suitcase for the air freshener and the screaming and the stench and most of the guilt are gone. Goodnight, moon, goodnight room…

  Jeremy’s Journal, April 11 th, 1994

  School psychologist tells me to keep a journal, so I’m keeping one now. He says I’m repressed and too unaware of my own feelings and pain. He says I need a creative outlet and to express myself more. Ted and Elise have a piano, a big, intimidating mahogany thing that everybody has too much respect for to touch. If they play it, bad music will surely come out, and since it’s an expensive piano, they want to think it can only make good music, and the only way it can really do that is if it makes no music. I thought about taking lessons, but I’m sorta sure that piano’s more expensive than I am, so I don’t ask.

  Ted dropped me off at the mall because he has things to do today. He left me a hundred dollar bill, which I am supposed to be impressed by and grateful for. So, I act impressed. I don’t tell him that I can’t wait to drive next year so that I can run over his legs and put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. I guess the school psychologist is right about me not expressing myself. I look at the bill in fained (is that how that’s spelled?) amazement and I thank him in my usual “I’m so glad you saved me from life as an orphan” level of gratitude.

  “You’re very important to us, Jeremy,” he says. I don’t think he realizes that he talks to me like I’m one of his middle management cronies. He’s talked to me about a business degree someday so that I can be. I always tell him that I’ll think about it. It always of course means no. There I am repressing everything again. But then again, what kind of role models do I have? Where do they get off calling me repressed when I live with a guy who talks to his foster son like that? Sometimes I swear he must be from space or a cyborg or something. I swear he ticks like a clock and his legs are pneumatic.

  “Enjoy yourself,” he tells me, “try not to spend it all in one place.”

  And I so wanted a new pair of Air Jordans. I find it odd that I’m someone to be bought off. I’m fifteen years old and yet have become a sort of o authority figure. I am in charge of their guilt; I am proof of their Christian Charity. I am God’s grounds for letting them into Heaven, in spite of their deep mediocrity. Other kids would feel like taking advantage of this, but other kids don’t get that it wouldn’t mean anything if I did. If there were something I wanted from them, it would be different. The only thing I want from anybody is something that I could only get from somebody who I’ll never see. I want my mother and my father (if I have one). I wonder what kind of father he’d be. At the very least, he’d be one to understand that I have nothing to do at the mall. There’s a bookstore there, but there’s a library down the street. There’s pizza there, but there’s pizza everywhere if I want it. There’s pizza at the supermarket which eventually becomes pizza in the freezer and then pizza at the table. There’s nothing for me at the mall. Nothing.

  The buzzing, honking and squeaking can be heard from the food court and you can see the glow of the machines from the B. Dalton. I’ve never seen an arcade so loud, so bright and so disruptive. I’m not fond of arcades, but this one has something really awful about it. You can’t quite see it at first. When you walk in, on one side is the skill crane, something I don’t consider aptly named. It’s too random. I’ve tried it, the claw more or less stops wherever it wants to stop.

  On the other side of the entrance is the change machine. The other kids line up there, letting it devour their fives and tens and taking the shiny quarters it vomits out. With those two machines spread so far apart, it feels like it’s actually spacious. A whole wide world of amusements looks to present itself. But the machines are so close together that you can feel the frustration and drench yourself in the sweat that the kid at the machine next to you is working up. Tight, wet, smells awful…

  It’s what I imagine girls are like. The girls I’ve met at least. But they don’t glow and make weird noises.

  The only machines that are spread apart from the others are the cars. Go in, sit down, play with the steering wheel and all of a sudden they feel themselves rushing down a big, monotonous stretch of racetrack, and inside the little dome, they don’t have to look at, smell or interact with any of the other children at all.

  I find myself at the arcade so often, because I want to know who runs this place. I guess it’s just trying to deal with an irrational, childish fear I have. I always find myself thinking that the arcade just runs itself. It’s stupid, but if you watch it long enough, you can see it. The kids put the money in the change machine, the change machine spits out the quarters, and the quarters work the arcade machine. The machines all feed each other in a scary little ecosystem. It’s crazy, but I feel like they don’t need anybody. Nothing scares me more than the thought that the machines are doing their own work and I have to find that they aren’t. But what proof is there?

  It’s so dark and anonymous that you can’t find it. I never see peo
ple loading the change machine. I never see anybody watching all the kids or repairing the arcade games. They might even be fixing themselves. They might extend little wires into the back of the others, share electricity, share their power, and keep this whole bright, shiny city of machines running. I look around for clues. I hope there’s an Out of Order sign on something every time so that I’ll know somebody put it there, but nothing at this arcade is out of order. Nothing ever gets fixed, so it’s almost like nobody’s there to set them up or fix them. There are never signs advertising the new games, the new games just arrive and the kids know that the new game is in and they walk up to it and they play it. Where are the people in all of this?

  Everybody’s acting like a machine, absolutely everybody. The kids don’t talk to each other at all, they grab the quarters, they put them in the arcade games and then they play the arcade game until the quarters are gone and then they either put more in, shuffle off disappointed, or one of their parents show up to pick them up. When they’re not playing against each other, they’re trying to outwit the computer, a lot of the time failing. So other than depositing quarters, they’re not doing anything that the machines can’t. And in the end, who comes out on top? The machines beat the kids and the kids put in more money to try and beat the machines. The machine is only serving its function and it gets paid for doing that function. The kid plays the machine, the machine plays the kid.

  This time, it’s really disappointing to me that nobody’s there running the arcade. In this little world, there isn’t a God and everything just runs itself. It’s scary thinking that. It’s scary thinking that maybe when I leave the arcade, everything outside is the same. Are they really that different from the robots they are at the arcade when they’re in class, raising their hand when a question’s asked and answering it? Deposit coin, serve function. Is my stepfather that different when he works all day to bring home money which he uses to buy a bigger TV or a new stereo? He still pumps coins into a little car and acts like it’s the Indie 500 when he’s driving it. Deposit coin, serve function. Outside the arcade, it’s just an arcade. People feed machines which feed people, turn them into machines to feed the machines. People play the game, game plays the people.

  It’s so cramped and claustrophobic and smelly at the arcade that I’m direly in need of air. I go outside into the parking lot and there’s an oldish man there in a long, smelly trenchcoat. He ducks between cars and underneath them, like he’s running and hiding from somebody, but when he emerges, he puts a page of newspaper on the windshields of each car. The way he puts out the newspaper, ducks away and then puts out more newspaper, you’d swear that he was some sort of demented newspaper sprite. He doesn’t quite act like a human being. It freaks me out at first, having seen so much mechanical behavior, but the more I watch him, the more it somehow relieves me to see how apelike his movements are. With all the jumping around, hiding and checking his surroundings, I think he’d be right at home in the jungle. The jungle would be a great relief to me. It would feel fresh and alive and like everybody’s not full of wires. I think someday I’ll go to the jungle.

  I approach one of the cars, take the piece of newspaper off it and read it. I made sure to keep it and paste it here. I wasn’t sure if it was some special newspaper or a page from the Weekly World News or something, but it seems authentic. I can’t believe all the things in that clipping. They don’t seem insane to me. They seem almost right. Nanites in things. People turning into robots. Extradimensional beings, evil things, looking to corrupt everybody. It has to be pure gibberish, but it is right there in the newspaper on page H8, where nobody looks. I think it’s the page after wedding announcements, and they print it really small, don’t even have headings on the columns. I hate it when you see something that has to be fake and has to be real at the same time. It’s a lot to take in, things I should think are just paranoid delusions, but maybe they’re not. I look around for the old man amidst the cars in the parking lot.

  “Where did you get this?” I ask him.

  “Where do you think I get it?” he asks, not emerging from beneath the car he’s hiding under, “it’s a newspaper page. I get it from the newspaper. Where the hell else do you get a newspaper page?”

  I don’t know why I feel like apologizing to an insane homeless man for bothering him, but I do.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him, “I was just curious.”

  “Killed the cat, curiosity. Haven’t you heard that?”

  I don’t feel like backing away from him, because everything inside the mall feels scarier, especially since I haven’t sorted out if the newspaper page is true or false. So I stand my ground and I nod. I don’t make any move closer, because he feels that much like a wild animal. If threatened, he might bite or scratch or just go generally insane on me. I’m not sure I trust him, but I don’t want to act like I’m afraid.

  He gets out from under the car. His face is covered in what looks like it might be several beards, because one beard doesn’t grow as thick as his. He looks like a picture of Moses, if Moses didn’t bathe or go to a barber or slept under a bridge. Is he a monkey or is he a prophet? I have to wonder as he stands there, looking me over like I’m the strange one, like I’m the one that’s likely to bite. I feel more than a little self conscious and nervous.

  “Put that one back,” he tells me, pointing at the page of newspaper, “people gotta see that.”

  “I wanna keep this one,” I tell him, and he seems to notice that nobody but me has been reading the things. He seems to notice that people come out to the parking lot, see the things on their cars and they crumple them up. He shrugs then grabs another one from a bag he keeps concealed in his coat and puts it on the same windshield. He’s got a lot of newspaper pages on him, and it looks like he wishes he could get every car.

  I feel like a total idiot, but I just have to ask him. “Can I help?”

  “Sure,” he says, handing me a bunch of the pages.

  People are coming outside to their cars, so I have to be extremely quick and extremely quiet. They all take a look at their cars, swear to themselves when they see the newspaper pages, and like the machines they are, don’t think before tearing them up, don’t think about the fact that something might be going down. I’m disappointed that nobody’s going to read them, but I feel like it’s important to try, because if these are true, people should know. People shouldn’t be giving birth to monsters or turning into robots without knowing it’s happening, especially when it’s right there in the paper. I’m doing something right, which is more than any of them can say, more than my foster parents can say, that’s for damn sure. Their idea of charity is taking in a kid, feeding him and sending him to some Catholic prep school. My idea of charity, this man’s idea of charity, makes more sense to me.

  It amazes me that he never gets caught, that he hides at just the right moments. He seems to feel people coming; he seems to have senses sharpened to fine points, like an animal or like some kind of psychic. It looks like he just tunes into how people feel, tunes into things psychically, and he can feel them showing up. Some people make him cringe. Sometimes, he almost gets caught because he sees something scary or hears some agonizing, awful sound, but he never does because he sees everyone coming. I’m not as good as he is, I almost get seen a couple times, but I’m starting to tune in.

  I can start to see what’s scaring him, but I’m not quite sure it’s there. If it is, there are some problems, some big problems. There are little lights in the air, awful little lights and they start to flit around people. And that’s if you look close enough, if you tune in, if you saw it in the paper maybe. Maybe if you see it in the paper, then you know it’s true and then you can see it. Maybe modern people are wired to that extent. I know everybody else thinks what they see in the paper is always true, and if it’s always true, then it must be there and you must be able to see it. It’s so childish, so uncomplicated.

  I crawl under the car with him and I offer him my hand.


  “I’m Jeremy.”

  “I don’t shake hands,” he tells me, “germs.”

  That’s a laugh. This dirty homeless man doesn’t want to get my germs. I can almost feel them crawling on me, until I get a grip. For some reason, everything he says feels truer than everything that other people say. He has an odd magnetism about him in spite of the disdainful and scary qualities.

  “What’s your name?” I ask him, as if I had to remind him that I sought to know. The more cynical side of me thinks that he probably doesn’t even know, that he’s probably too far gone to hold up a really normal conversation, or else that he’ll say that he’s Jesus. The less cynical side of me wonders if I’d believe him if he said that he was Jesus.

  “I’m General Lud. It’s not my real name, but it’s what I use. I’ve been waitin’ for somebody to read these. Some people have and they help me sometimes and bring me food and buy me more newspapers. They can see that it’s the truth. They sorta knew it already. I sorta knew it before I read. I knew that it sorta had to be true anyway. It’s not that big of a stretch.”

  “So it is all true?” I ask, not needing to know whether or not I’m insane but just wanting to hear him say again that it’s true, just wanting to hear him say it once more. Then it would definitely be true.

  “Of course it’s all true,” he tells me, “it is, after all, in the newspaper.”

  I feel cold and alone in the world all of a sudden. This man doesn’t help it, this man’s ability to see the truth or to speak things that feel correct don’t help it at all. When I go home, I read the little newspaper clipping over and over again for hours, and each time it says the same thing and each time General Lud is right. I don’t know what to do about it right now, but I know that it will have to be something drastic.