I thought, Yeah, I know, I wanted to edit ‘The Thing In The Tunnel.’
Guh! You wrote that like forever ago. And it’s just a short. I’m a novel!
Listen, dude, gimme a break. It’s not like I don’t think about you and Jack and Caleb and Catarina all the time. The novel is just going to take a bit longer. Because it’s a damn novel. Bigger than a breadbox. All that.
Ffffffff – you’re going to have them kill me, aren’t you? Jack and Caleb and Catarina are your little heroes and you’re going to have them kill me.
I don’t know. I haven’t written it yet. But, you are sort of shitty guy so far.
I’m not! I’m just misunderstood.
Really? Really?! You’re a massive, ancient monster who avoided the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs, listens to the vibrations super strings, hides under Brooklyn, eats corpses, and you have the illogical ability to make nightmares real. All while tormenting humans. And you look like a living terror. A crustacean crossed with a squid crossed with a spider with a vaguely human skull. That’s you. That’s who you are. Being kind of evil is your thing.
Oh, I hate it. And you’re a fuckfart. Change it or I’ll eat the R train.
I hate the goddamn R train.
Come onnnnnnnn!
Fuck, fine, I’ll figure something out. But whatever I change, I’m not going to jeopardize the story just because you’re sensitive about being a bit evil.
Kthxbye
Ariela shot me a concerned look.
“Underground monster,” I said. I rubbed my forehead. “They’re like children. All of them. They’re so goddamn sensitive about how the world might look at their monstrousness.”
“Can you blame them? You’ve had them do terrible things,” Ariela said.
“Not all of that came from me.”
The dumbwaiter door in our kitchen swiveled open. Behind it was no dumbwaiter at all, but a tight, Tartarean tunnel leading straight down. It hit our apartment building’s basement and then opened up into a terrible cavern hundreds of feet below Brooklyn.
I had no name for what lived there. I only called them ‘slender things’ in the short I wrote. They didn’t make much noise beyond a harsh, wet breathing. It was the sound of hot moist pressure rattling around inside spongy flesh. They were humanoid, pale grey, skinny, almost fleshless creatures. Skeletons dipped in candle wax. Their eyes were enormous orbs with pupils that shrank to pinholes when the slightest amount of light hit them.
I thought they were terrifying in a smug, pleased-with-myself kind of way.
Scurrying around in the darkness. Too tall and too thin. Appendages like spider legs. Big bright eyes. A jaw that unhinged like a snake’s so it could devour bigger meals.
That story horrified Ariela. She couldn’t handle the imagery of the monster and what it did. Hell, they creeped even me out. And I knew it was bullshit.
Well, bullshit to a certain extent. Because now one was standing right behind me.
I saw its emaciated frame reflected in our kitchen window.
I turned slowly and locked my own eyes with the slender thing’s. Turned and listened to its sick breathing. I saw its wretched, bony chest rising and falling. It watched me. An animal whose mind operated in ways foreign to my own.
It looked hungry.
I waited a beat. Then another.
And it waited. Glared with those big headlight eyes.
I said. “We’re eating.”
It furrowed its pale brow and started looking at the ground. It shifted its weight from one leg to the other like a young boy who had been caught with his hand somewhere it shouldn’t be.
I gave it my best ‘you’re a bad dog’ look in earnest.
And it looked at me with its best puppy impression. Pupils dilating from pinpricks to the size of manhole covers.
The thing was still creepy.
“OK. One piece,” I said. I reached onto my plate for a chunk of steak.
It squatted and created a reasonable enough facsimile of doggy behavior that my mind (however brief) thought the horrendous creature cute.
I stood, red meat in hand, and walked over to it. The thing was shaking its butt back and forth. Unfortunately, without a tail, the movement seemed more like some sudden loss of motion control than an excited wag. It tilted its head up toward me, eyes still big. It opened its awful mouth and I dropped the meat in.
The slender thing snapped its jaws down. A sound that was a cross between a dog’s whine and a cat’s purr escaped its throat. Then it turned and began its spine-tingling spider-walk back down the tunnel.
I sat at the table and resumed eating.
Ariela stared at me, disgusted. “And you get angry when I feed the cats scraps?”
I shrugged and popped a bloody piece of steak into my mouth. “The cats seem a bit less dangerous than that thing.”
There were shouts down the hall. Human barks. Ariela and I knew what it was. We’d heard it before. Too many times.
The pusher. Smacking his latest girlfriend around. I guess he got tired of trying to sell shit to the little kids in the building.
Tonight, like every night we heard abuse, Ariela was up and off like a shot. She ran into the bedroom, grabbed our Louisville Slugger and headed for the door. I followed her with my brass knuckles.
We rapped on the pusher’s door. There were more shouts from behind it.
We knocked again. Then hit the door with bat and knuckles.
It got quiet.
A scrawny young white guy opened the door. The chains around his neck probably weighed more than he did. He wore wearing nothing but boxer shorts and a tank top. His eyes went to Ariela first. He smiled. I watched his gaze ooze over my girl’s breasts and hips like a fetid oil spill. I wanted to kill him then and there. To break his face open and let the monsters chew on his guts. To let them enjoy ripping him apart.
Tempting. Oh so tempting.
Ariela spoke. She waved the bat. “You eyeball me like that and I’ll make you useless to whatever girl you convince fuckin you is a good idea. But then I doubt you’re so kind as to let them decide.”
She talked like a woman from David Milch’s handbook for badassery.
I couldn’t deny how attractive it was. Excellent dialogue.
“Everything’s fine, girly girl,” the pusher smiled.
I glanced at Ariela’s dark eyes from the side. She didn’t blink.
“I mean it,” she said. “I’m going to call the cops, and my man already wants you dead, giving as how you looked at me. He’s got what we call a ‘flexible morality.’”
I grinned. Made sure he saw the brass around my knuckles.
Still smiling, he nodded to someone outside our view. Then, quick as a whip, two men were by his side. They looked like mutants – head-eating mutants. Large humans with nothing going on between the ears but a big belly to fill.
“Where’s the girl?” Ariela asked.
Mr. Pusher nodded again off to the side. A young woman appeared. If she was eighteen, then I was the pope. And given how much sex I enjoyed, I definitely wasn’t the pope.
“I’m fine. I fell,” the girl said. There was a fresh black eye blooming above her cheek. “They’ve been taking care of me.”
“I’m sure they have,” Ariela said. She put the finishing touches on our evening. “We suspect something again and you’ll be bloody before we call the cops. They’ll show up knowing they need body bags.”
Mr. Pusher made a kissy-face.
Ariela and I walked back to our apartment. We felt a shame of inaction.
I wished that my horrors had been there to chew on them.
We called the cops. Nothing came of it.
Life into statistics.
I’ve discussed the monsters with my friends ad nauseum. Both sober and drunk. Paramount among the discussions is how in the hell any of it was happening. We knew it was tied to the writing, since only beasts whose lives I’ve authored show up. One theory was that I was acting li
ke a radio beacon for them. The stories gave them life. Then, I thought about them as I told their stories and my brain sent out waves that attracted them. Some monster triangulation, and bang, they’re here. Ridiculous, I know, but the whole situation was pretty ridiculous. This at least made a kind of pulp sense.
Another major question was: Why did none of my heroes ever show up to help? Were created-humans different from created-monsters? If so, there was no logic to it. The only idea I had resembling a theory was that the bad guys were more egotistical than the good guys, which made them more likely to show up, which had a different pulp logic to it.
Writing is creation. Something from nothing. That had to be a key component.
Not writing wasn’t an option, even as a defensive measure. This was all compulsive. An addiction. I was incapable of not writing. And who said I wanted everything to go away?
After I punched up a short about an airstrip where old gremlins retired, a few of them arrived at the apartment – each with the wonky personality I had given them in the story. After I wrote about gargoyles hibernating in the smoke stacks along the Gowanus Bay waterfront, a few of them came knocking. Or clawing, as it were. The shithead cats noticed them prowling around first.
They were my favorites, the gremlins and the gargoyles. Quietly noble, just wanting peace. They were funny, too, in a really stupid kind of way. Dick and fart jokes.
Piss them off and they’d suck your bones out, though.
Which is precisely what happened to the pusher who beat up his girlfriend and sold brain-ruining shit to kids out of his apartment.
I was with Faraday, one of the gremlins. He was monkeying around with an RC car I had given him. If gremlins are not entertained, they start doing damage – something I wanted to avoid. Hence the car.
He lost control of the little toy. Or did it on purpose. Which, knowing Faraday, is actually more likely. It smacked into the thug’s shoe as he was leaving his apartment and left a dark tire mark.
Now, I don’t know much about drug dealing. Don’t know how important one’s footwear might be to the whole image thing. But apparently the pusher’s shoes were very, very important to him. When the RC car scuffed them, the dude lost it. He picked the RC up and hurled it down the hallway. It shattered against the beige painted cinderblock of the building. Little wheels and plastic axels spun off and bounced down the hall.
“That your fuckin car? That your fuckin remote control car, faggot?” the thug squealed. He pointed at me.
I crossed my arms over my chest. Faraday jumped behind me. I said, “No, it was my friend’s. And now you’ve busted it. Congratulations. I’ll pay to have your shoes fixed, or whatever, if that will calm you down.”
The pusher wasn’t exactly a terrifying guy, as previously mentioned. His only muscles were his big friends. And they were nowhere to be found. Plus, I had my monster now.
“Motherfucker, I am calm. I’m perfectly calm, but you fucked up my shoes.”
“Yes, we’ve established that.”
“You getting smart with me, bitch?”
“Getting?”
Mr. Pusher stomped toward me.
Faraday popped out to greet him.
“Hi!” the diminutive critter chirped.
Mr. Pusher stopped in his tracks.
Faraday, like most gremlins, was about two and a half feet tall. His skin was a scaly, mottled green. He had ears like a cat. A body like a chimpanzee. A face like a snub-nosed lizard. Equal parts adorable and repulsive. A sight like that tends to frighten people. Keep them away. Which is good. The problem here was that the pusher decided to act tough.
Terrible decision.
“That another little toy?” the Mr. Pusher asked. “You had a gay ass remote control car now you got a gay ass little lizard thing, too?”
I didn’t say anything. I just kept my arms crossed. If he took a swing at me, I’d swing back. But, if he tried to go after the gremlin, I’d let the gremlin handle it.
Mr. Pusher went to kick Faraday, but my scaly pal was too fast. Swing and a miss. He scrambled up the guy’s leg and crawled around his side, crossing the thug’s stomach and chest, twirling around him like a snake. Once Faraday reached shoulder level, he grabbed the abusive bastard’s head and stuck his little green butt against the man’s cheek.
“I will make you suck my farts!” the gremlin decreed, letting loose an astonishing burst of noxious gas.
Mr. Pusher gagged and choked and flailed his arms. It would have been hilarious – a Chuck Jones cartoon come to life – but a moment later, blood began to fall. Faraday sunk his teeth into the man’s neck. He bit down. Pulled away chunks of flesh, tendon and sinew.
Red exploded from the Mr. Pusher in a geyser. It poured over the walls. The floor. Me. The dealer tried to scream, but it came out as a weak, wet gurgle. I went to pull Faraday from Mr. Pusher’s body, but only succeeded in slipping in the gore that now covered the floor.
Down the hall, a neighbor opened the door. It was the red-haired half of an elderly lesbian couple who lived in the building. I’d known them for years. I even liked their dog, though the four-legged fiend did nothing but bark at me.
When Mrs. Red Head gazed upon me with horrified eyes, all I could do was shrug.
Faraday saw her and greeted her with his customary, excited, “Hi!” He waved one small blood-covered hand in a wave, and then stepped away from Mr. Pusher’s limp form. He examined the damage he’d just caused a formerly-living human. Then turned back to Mrs. Red Head. “This guy was a real dick,” he declared, while pointing at the corpse, as if that made the violence totally acceptable.
I’ve seen Red Head since, but now it’s really awkward.
The gargoyles (Faraday referred to them as ‘cousins’) showed up after the (screw you, it was justified) murder. They folded their massive grey wings against their bodies as they prowled up the stairs. They cleaned up the body by snacking on it and lapping up the blood.
Even though they were the size of lions, they rubbed up against my legs like house cats seeking attention. I petted them as though they were just that.
This seemed normal to me. That’s how far gone my mind was.
At least I had enough sense not to tell Ariela.
When she noted that Mr. Pusher’s place was suddenly up for rent, I shrugged.
Schneer showed up later for a drink. He’d reattached his arm by tying some loose tendons together in haphazard knots. His body adopted the appendage. And now it worked just fine, against all laws of science. As for how this was possible, he credited the parasite I had created that was living in his head.
Ariela enjoyed having Schneer around. Maybe it was his sense of humor, which was a mix of Louis CK and Patton Oswalt. Or maybe it was his tall tales. All of my monsters were very good at telling stories.
The three of us got a little drunk. And then Ariela shuffled off to bed.
Schneer and I stayed up. We shot the shit. We drank.
“Word around the undesirables of this city is, you killed a man,” Schneer said. He poured himself a few fingers of Jameson.
I downed my shot and lit a cigarette. “Not that badass, myself. Faraday did it. I just kinda let it happen. The asshole deserved it.”
Schneer threw some whiskey down his resilient though decaying throat and nodded. “Not disagreeing with you. From what I hear. Guy beat on women. Pushed drugs on kids. Yeah, that guy deserved to have his throat slit and raped by rabid rape dogs. But, I thought you should know that his friends aren’t happy.”
“Define friends. All I saw was two Neanderthals.”
Schneer looked at me with that one remaining good eye of his. “You’re kind of dim sometimes, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been drinking, man. Would you just fuckin tell me?”
“That low-level skinny piece of shit pusher had bosses. Bosses who wanted this part of Brooklyn to themselves. And they had it. This is a pretty nice area, and the dude fit in well enough. His bosses liked him. They’re consideri
ng his ‘disappearance’ an act of hostility against their operation.”
“As if I’m trying to move in on their turf.”
“Well, they think someone is. I don’t think they know you had anything to do with it, but I’d start keeping an eye open. It’s only a matter of time before someone fingers you for the guy who had beef with their guy. And drug dealers, man … Us, your monsters, we love you in a diseased way. You created us. We would never hurt you. But those assholes have guns. And they will use those guns to put bullets in you.”
I poured myself another shot. “OK, I get it. Thing I don’t get is why you guys can’t protect me.”
“We can. Hell, we are. You die and it’s game over for us. We want you to keep writing stories and infecting folks with us. So, we’ve got a vested interest. But. I don’t know if we can prevent a .45 slug from whizzing across the street and adding another hole to you. You understand?”
“Yeah,” I muttered. I swallowed the wonderful burn of Jameson.
Schneer clapped me on the shoulder. “Atta boy.”
I spent the next few hours drinking myself stupid. I tried to remember all the bad guys I’d created who might be able to help. I’d made up many, it seemed, but only a few turned out to be strategically viable.
The gremlins were a no-brainer. Even if they did act like Looney Tunes on speed. Plus I liked fart jokes. The gargoyles were doubly no-brainer, given their size, speed, strength and loyalty. They also acted like cats with my cats. Ariela liked that.
Schneer was good in the informant position, but he probably couldn’t fight very well, what with the decomposition, so he was out. Three, the underground monster, was the biggest and most powerful. But he was too goddamn big to be useful – I didn’t want to take out an entire city block – and he also had a tendency to act like a baby. So that was out. The slender things were just unreliable. Like dogs, yes, but also willing to beg for a treat. Not quite what I needed.
That left gremlins and gargoyles. Protecting their human creator.
Kind of awesome.
Ariela was fine with all of this. I expected at least a little resistance, but got none. I chalked it up to the added sense of security the monsters gave her.
She was stretched out on the couch. One of our cats asleep on her chest. On the floor beside her slept one of the smaller gargoyles. His grey, lightly-furred ribcage rose and fell with each titanic breath. Another one of our cats was curled up on top of him.
The Space Whiskey Death Chronicles Page 18