Futile Efforts

by Piccirilli, Tom

  The boy just stood there blinking at Briar, peering intently like he was trying to get something blurry into focus. Mom using the towel to dry his hair, tugging him this way and that but the kid still wouldn't take his eyes off Briar. He sneezed and rubbed at his nose, and sneezed again, sniffing at the frying ozone.

  "It's time for you folks to go," Briar said.

  Father didn't know best, didn't know shit, and said, "But the hurricane—"

  Mom getting this semi-demented look on her face, about to screech about bad manners or disrespect to tourists, how she'd never come out this way again, sticking her bloody leg out in front her like it might ward off assholes.

  Briar reached into his pocket and handed the man a key. "I was staying at the Shoreline Inn. It's right up the road. The room's paid for until tomorrow. Go and spend the night. Like Socco said, there's free cable."

  "But—"

  The kid proved to be smarter than his parents, tugging at his father's sleeve. "Let's go Dad."

  "Maybe The Princess Bride will be on HBO," the girl said.

  Dad catching a hint of larger troubles, wanting to get out now but still scared. "Even if it is only down the street, we won't be able to get there. Are you people blind? Have you looked at it out there? We'll drive into the ocean!"

  "No, you won't. You'll be safe."

  "How can you say that?"

  "Because," Briar told him. "It's my storm."

  He stood and a burst of hot air swept around him and gusted into the parents' face. Mom went, "oh," and the father withdrew, holding the key as the boy tugged at his little sister. She finished the cappuccino and said, "That was good, can I have another?"

  Dad told her, "No, we're leaving. Come on."

  The mother rushed out first, followed by the kids, the dad backing out slowly, one step at a time, before turning and making a run. Sort of funny actually, the way things worked out. It was nice that Briar got a chance to do something good for somebody else for once, no matter how meaningless. They got to their car and piled in, and Briar saw the rain lighten up around them, making way, the tempest humming and rumbling and shrieking, but holding back just a bit while they drove the half-mile to the hotel.

  Sometimes you gave a shit and sometimes you didn't.

  Briar rubbed at his temples, took a deep breath, and approached the Ganooch's table. All the soldiers stiffened in their chairs, and Briar kept his hands open at his sides. He waited and tried to glare at Richie but there didn't seem much of a point now.

  "A man with a story," Ganooch said. "So what is it?"

  "One you've heard before, Mr. Ganucci."

  "I'm seventy-four years old, I've heard 'em all by now."

  That was probably true. "You mind filling me in on the joke with the rabbi and the fat lady with the mole?"

  "What?"

  "I came in late on it. And you tell it so well."

  The Ganooch had seen plenty of pains in the asses like Briar before, somebody out to annoy him. Cops, shooters, unhappy union reps. "You got balls of ice, my friend."

  Richie cocked his chin and said, "You look familiar. I've been trying to figure it out."

  "Yeah?"

  "You. But it's not you. The kid."

  Briar blinked at him. Christ, Richie really did have a photographic mind and could access all that data from the dead past. "Yes."

  "You're the brother."

  "That's right."

  "Tommy, right? Little Tommy Briar."

  It stopped him cold and the roof thumped directly overhead as if fists were hammering against it. "Jesus Christ, Richie, they weren't kidding about your memory. You could've only seen me once as a kid. The morning you killed my sister. I was in her apartment, visiting. Rode my bike over, had breakfast there. She made waffles. The roommate was asleep. You and Popgun did her in her bed. Or he did her while you sat in your car and watched. Either way."

  Ganooch spun in his chair and said, "Richie, who the hell is this smartmouth?"

  Richie got up and tried to slap Briar. Maybe it was a wiseguy thing to do. He was, after all, a capo surrounded by his men, and even if he didn't usually go in for the rough stuff he had to beat some ass now and again. Didn't make a fist, though, just made as if he was smacking his wife. Briar shifted his weight and balance, easing left so Richie's hand swung over Briar's shoulder. It was a powerfully non-aggressive move that still hinted at violence. It was enough for Richie Merullo to back off a step and try to figure the situation anew.

  "Do you know what anguish is, Richie?"

  "Anguish?"

  "It isn't pain. It's energy. It's resolve. You dwell on something long enough and all that concentration, your sorrow, it cracks your chest in half and can fly up into the sky."

  "You're fuckin' crazy kid."

  "You got calamari stains on your tie, you sloppy prick."

  That was the last line to cross. Richie made a soft sound like a baby who'd lost his rattle. "Would somebody whack this fucker already!"

  "It's mine, this storm," Briar told him. "Hurricane Thomas. It's been brewing in me for fifteen years, and now it's finally come for you."

  Popgun Fusilli, the murderer of his sister, started moving that massive bulk and was instantly on his feet, Briar not even seeing him stand up really, he was just suddenly there in force.

  "Okay, Pop, two in the face. Make sure you take my eyes. I don't want to see what she does to you."

  But Richie had finally gotten around to looking out the window at the ocean. The smashing insanity of the typhoon brewing, boiling, attacking now and taking on a new form and substance.

  Did he see her? Were there thousands of white-capped faces smiling at him, blowing kisses? Dancing as she'd danced on the stage for him?

  "What the hell is that out there?" Richie moaned.

  "It's the little dark cloud that's been hovering over your head. Her name is Bethie."

  Briar smiled. It felt good to be smiling again, at last. Richie began losing it, moving as if he might want to hug Briar, or be hugged by him, letting loose with a growling whine. "Are you really doing this?"

  "Sure, why the hell not?"

  The 'Niners with three seconds left on the twenty, the entire Bronco defensive line waiting, Popgun reaching under his arm for his shoulder holster and drawing out the nickel-plated .22—Briar again noticing how...how goddamn exquisite those hands were—as the Ganooch made a funky gurgling noise. He struggled from his seat staring out the window and whimpered, "Jesus, the hell's going on? What...?" There was no beach left at all. No land in sight, just the bloody sea ripping loose and raging forward. The waves stood four stories high, tens of millions of gallons surging. Richie looked at Briar one last time and leaped up with his arms out, knees bent, like he might try surfing his way out. Socco behind the bar saying, "Look at this one...." His gaze almost forgiving now, sort of sad but not quite. Glass splintered and wood cracked and the walls and roof buckled with a ripping scream. Popgun squealed with his outlandish voice—girlish, even coquettish—and pulled the trigger. Briar felt the intense pain blossom inside his left eye but it didn't match what was already thriving ruthlessly, and still growing, inside him. The .22 came up again and Popgun's pretty white finger started to tighten once more, as Briar snickered, the 'Niners ran it in, and the hurricane thrashed out of his sick head and swallowed the whole room and all the stinking world.

  Introduction for "Tortures of that Inward"

  By Simon Clark

  The end of the world? Armageddon? The apocalypse? All that fiery stuff in Revelations? Could it ever happen? Yeah, of course it will. It has to. There's no doubting it. One day planet Earth will be no more. Either naturally, when the sun expands to devour the Solar System, well at least the important bit that includes our home planet's orbit. Or it might just happen before, either due to war or some hideously extravagant industrial accident. Really, when you get down to it, the notion that the world will end one day is mundane, even banal. What's really interesting is that humanity appears to
feel compelled, in some ineffably strange collective way, to imagine scenarios of its annihilation. Most religions have the blueprint for Ultima Thule embedded in their belief system, while popular culture has spun many a yarn about life being terminated on this humble ball of rock that spins through the big, cold scary vacuum of space.

  The thing is, the world is ending all the time. Often we don't realize it's happening because the curtailment of the old order happens slowly as society changes. The world of your grandparents is dead and gone; if you can, ask them; they know we live in a new society now. Sometimes, civilizations collapse all of a sudden or at least suddenly from our perspective. Anyone who lived in Rome when its last Emperor was retired by the German King Odoacer in 476, or when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1452 must have thought: 'Oh, crap. That's the end of the world as we know it.' And it was. Their inhabitants must have despaired. They wouldn't have believed life could continue at all. But many survived and they adapted to a new way of being. Even the last Roman Emperor didn't come to a bloody end; he exchanged imperial purple for a Bishop's vestments and lived happily on a very generous pension, thank you very much. Yet even though people know, by virtue of all those precedents history has set us, that life will go on after the worst of calamities they--we!--still instinctively, hold ourselves in cat-like readiness for Armageddon. Sometimes it's the loonies on the street corner who scream at cars, 'The end is nigh!' or its brilliant writers like William Hope Hodgson, Richard Matheson, Jack Finney (happily, the list goes on and on -- I love a good disaster story) who present their own chilling visions of our global demise.

  Now to 'Tortures of that Inward.' Those first few paragraphs here have been a dead give-away, haven't they? Okay, I'm not spilling too many beans if I admit this story of Tom Piccirilli's is about the end of the world. But it's the way that premonition -- that great and terrible premonition of global destruction -- which appears to be imprinted into our very genes is handled that is sublime. You know what you like about Tom Piccirilli's work. For me, his lean prose is in perfect balance with a poetic aesthetic. Sentences resonate in a way that renders them both beautiful and horrific. Take one line from this story and read it aloud. You'll see what I mean. For example: They were becoming golden, as if touched by a molten blanketing of the sun, before it turned to a sackcloth of ashes. One day a publisher will have an even smarter idea. They'll issue an audio collection of Tom's stories read by a pro actor. Imagine sitting in the dark listening to this tale's succession of vividly wrought images on headphones. That's when the power of his work will zap you all over again with the power of a lightning strike. Having said that, Tom's work as it appears on the printed page is wickedly good. And, of course, there's nothing to stop you asking a friend/spouse/lover to read it aloud to you, is there?

  I know you'll enjoy this darkly witty story as much as I did. I'm delighted, therefore, and honored to invite you to read on -- to experience the 'Tortures of That Inward.' And if you should wake up in the morning and find your dog talking to you, well…

  –Simon Clark, author of STRANGER and IN THIS SKIN

  Tortures of that Inward

  For Gerard Houarner

  Watching the blood of his neighbors seeping beneath the door into his apartment, Wynne took another swig of 151 Rum and continued to argue with his dead dog, Gomez.

  Gomez said, "It's time. You have a purpose to fulfill."

  Wynne figured he already knew his mission in the world and held the bottle to his forehead, rolling it across his brow the way his old man used to do on the really bad nights.

  Screams erupted all over the building, high-pitched caterwauls and low rolling moans nearly in harmony. Pain and terror turned everyone into one vast choir for the ages, and for your sins you could do nothing but listen.

  They were killing themselves or each other, none of this silent suicide in the bathtub shit. Gunshots echoed through the hallways–a .38, a .45, an eleven gauge. You could hear the slap of bone and brain yolk against the walls, the contented sighs as bodies slid to the floor and toppled over.

  Christ, even now you could make out the sounds of the kinksters making one last go of it in bed. In the apartment above him were a couple of swingers who liked the dom/sub clubs. They'd throw leather and latex parties and invite him as a joke. Bless their pervie asses, they were gonna go out in the saddle if they had to go at all.

  Peals of ringing glass were followed by the enormous crashes and crying children. Wynne stood at his window and watched the city going mad in the streets. The plague of heaven was upon them, the promise of God fulfilling itself hour by hour.

  "There's no escape," Gomez the Chihuahua told him with a slight Mexican accent. "But you can still redeem yourself."

  "How about if you give it a rest?"

  "No. God no longer waits. His patience is at an end."

  It's happening, Wynne thought, knowing the awful truth in his gut. This is the end they always warned us about. When the graves of the earth open up and the corpses rise, and the sky cracks open and the sun turns black.

  Or maybe he was still only crazy.

  Amazing what you could wish for depending on the circumstances. He slammed the rum down on his kitchen table and moved to the shelves of his bookcases, hunting for a Bible. He had one around here someplace. Someone in the apartment next door started shrieking and butting his head against the wall. Wynne's books shifted and fell over and tumbled to the floor. He looked for a while longer but still couldn't find the Bible, the one with his mother's handwritten notations in it, his father's family medical history in front. The guy next door continued smashing his own skull in.

  "The window," Gomez said. "Look there."

  "I don't need to. I know what's going on," Wynne told him. "Angels circling wide across the clouds. The dead rising from the dirt. Demons boiling up from the subways."

  If he was only nuts the doctors would be tripping over themselves to write up this turn in his case study. A major psychotic snap. Wynne remembered the little blue tabs they'd put on the manila file folders of such patients. The religious schizoids who'd talk to Moses between Lithium shots. On ward six, Wynne had met two Mother Marys, two Jesuses, one Mary Magdalenes who'd masturbate right there in the rec room with her hand halfway up her snatch. One Roman soldier who'd stabbed Christ in the side, and three guilt-ridden yutzes who thought they were Judas. They used to play cards a lot together, sit at the same table during the arts and crafts class, the three Judases weaving baskets side by side

  A couple of the religious jobs had a thing for nails. They'd pry wood furniture apart, force the nails free, and drive them through their hands and feet, bleeding all over the ward. One of them, he did such a good job of spiking himself to the floor that it took the attendants about an hour to get him loose. They're working away with the claw-ends of hammers and this schizo, he's just praying over them, doing crosses in the air, forgiving their sins, pulling down his blue jammies and saying, "Look at my seven inch St. Peter." Putting on a show for the rest of the ward. Wynne remembered laughing so hard that they had to sedate him.

  "It's real," Gomez said. "But you can't completely accept it. There's still a portion of you that believes it's all in your sick head."

  "And you?" Wynne asked. Downstairs, somebody was working away on her kids with a butcher knife, trying to save them from the rapture. You'd think it might be time for people to start acting a little nice.

  "I'm real, and I've come back to speak with you. But this only muddies the issue."

  Okay, now maybe they were getting somewhere. Wynne reached for the bottle again and took another deep pull. It made him hiss and grunt as the heat dropped through his stomach. He'd taken his first drink of hard liquor at fourteen and now he was thirty-nine. He'd knocked back thousands of gallons over the last twenty-five years and he still hated the fucking taste of it. "And what is the issue?"

  "Your soul, of course."

  "Not my mind?"

  "Your mind is lost, but your so
ul may yet be saved."

  Well, when the tiny bastard put it like that, so long as you overlooked the obvious fact that you were crazy, things almost sounded a bit hopeful.

  "How'd you get so smart, Gomez? When you were alive you were the stupidest dog I ever saw. You shit on the floor for nine years. I could walk you in the park for five hours straight, and the minute you stepped in the door you'd drop a turd on the rug."

  Gomez sort of smiled at that, like he enjoyed the aggravation he'd put Wynne through. "I am not your dog. I am the essence of Raphael the Archangel, one of the seven who stand before the throne of God. Patron saint of ambulance drivers, artists, the dying, knights, mariners, paramedics, paratroopers, police officers, sailors, soldiers, swordsmiths, and the mentally ill."

  "I was wondering where I fit into all that."

  Wynne heard a weird sound coming out of the Chihuahua and thought it might be snickering. "Returned to the world in these final days of reckoning," his dead dog said.

  He eyed Gomez closely. "Why are you laughing?"

  "The very fact that you're willing to believe me proves you're insane."

  You couldn't argue with logic, so you had to just let it go and start back from square one.

  Still, Wynne could feel the rising fear inside him, the ache of his sins coming back to lash at him again. His imagination alive and blazing and sending him into fits of rage and want. He doubled over and chewed at his tongue until blood flooded his mouth. He swallowed it knowing he was only swallowing himself, the way he'd been doing since he was a kid. He couldn't place the blame of his noisy mind on any single trauma. No great scene of horror from his childhood. It was simply the petty torments added one on top of the other that had driven him into the psychologists' offices, the high school counselors' offices, the analysts' offices, the mental hospital.

  "So Judgment Day is here."