PORNOCRATES grabbed them before I could, but a threatening slash from Michael’s newly acquired swords released them from her hands. Nobody seemed willing to approach him now, not even EMINOR, who stood there like an immortal god rather than attacking. I retrieved my pants and rushed out the front door. Michael followed.
“Where did you learn to fight like that?”
“I didn’t.” Michael gasped for breath. “But a little Three Stooges and repeated viewings of the Karate Kid Part II goes a long ways.”
We ran towards Second Street as frantically as we could, jeans still flailing from my fingers. When we turned around the Lost Boys weren’t far behind us. They’d piled into a Volkswagen Bus with rainbows painted on the side and were charging in our direction. We made it as far as Second Street before its gurgling engine caught up to us. The front bumper slapped the back of Michael’s leg and sent him keeling over. PORNOCRATES caught me by the hair and drug me a couple of feet before letting go. I landed face down in the street. The bus skidded to a stop.
I crawled over to Michael, helped him to his feet, and drug our bodies across the asphalt as quickly as possible. Michael limped. He’d lost both swords in the tumble. Car doors opened up. I heard the sound of shoes jumping onto the asphalt. Car doors closed. A window shattered. More glass shattered. I turned around to see Skull Face with a crowbar, bashing in car windows as he approached us. Michael tripped. I went spiraling down with him and landed on somebody’s sneakers. I looked up at the next stranger to mysteriously appear on the scene.
It was the homeless man.
He was twitching as he normally did, shaking his head to and fro, unshaven, and his ragged clothes smelled of urine. He probably hadn’t showered in weeks. But I was thrilled to run into him.
“Murray sees you.” The crazy old man said to the five remaining Lost Boys, who had already surrounded us. “Murray sees everything that you do.”
“Not you too, old man.” EMINOR sighed. “This doesn’t concern you, and it’s getting terribly tiresome.”
“Murray will not stand for this.” He twitched his head.
“Very well then,” the leader said to the others. “Take him.”
They grabbed the homeless man by his coat, hurled him to the sidewalk, and immediately began beating him with all ferociousness and severity. Fists knuckled his face into a wrinkled, bloody mush. Shoes cracked into his ribs.
“Stop it!” I cried. “Leave him alone!”
The crazy old homeless man raised his fingers up, as if trying to clutch the sky. “Murray!” He cried. “They’re hurting me, Murray!”
Whoever this Murray was, perhaps another unmedicated personality, never thought to show. He pleaded for him however as Skull Face bashed him over the head with his crowbar four times in a row. The waterspout and the men in wife-beaters suddenly flashed into my field of vision. The fuel truck toppled over the road, lurched over my car and exploded, and finally horrific reminders of my tenor in the North Tower rapidly replayed into my thinking. It was as if he had placed those memories there.
Then the mysterious vagabond turned his head. He looked at me straight on (the white of his eyes were haunting), and with his final breaths said, “Murray frees you.”
EMINOR finished him off with a sawed off shotgun, three bullets to the chest. Blood flowed from beneath his body. His eyes turned to coal. The homeless man was dead.
I was speechless.
Michael grabbed me by the collar, pulled me up off the street, and ran at a limp.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“How should I know? Murray said we were free to go. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re going somewhere.”
I looked back over my shoulder. Skull Face was the only member following us on foot, bashing in car windows with his crowbar as he went. The four remaining others had hopped back in the Volkswagen Bus. They started the engine, u-turned around the street, and started towards us.
Michael and I made it as far as The Guide Dog before Skull Face tackled me on the sidewalk. We both went spiraling over a Harley motorcycle. It toppled over another Harley, which in turn fell like a domino on top of another, and another, until at least a dozen of them were sprawled out along the sidewalk. I kicked him in the mouth, scrambled to my feet, and charged for the pub. The door was closed. Michael didn’t even go for the handle. He just thrust his body upon it and we both barreled through. Skull Face lurched on top of him.
Something snapped, like a finger or something.
And just like that the bar was populated with a dozen bikers. Lance was standing behind the bar. I looked to the man with the DECADENT tattoo across the front of his neck. His eyes widened in disbelief, and for the first time I think he was genuinely afraid.
“Hey, what the….” One of the bikers said. “Who knocked over our bikes?”
“He did.”
I pointed to the man with the DECADENT tattoo.
“I hate clowns.” Another biker formed a massive fist and slugged knuckles into his other hand. The beating of a lifetime swiftly followed; only Michael and I weren’t the recipients of it. The Day of the Dead cake topper was.
10
All that I could think about was Elise’s safety as I dashed back out onto Second Street. Michael followed after. Inside The Guide Dog, the man with the skull painted onto his face was taking a beating and the world was suddenly populated again with hundreds of cars driving up and down and through its intersections, noises and smells from street-front restaurants of all kinds filled the air, and perhaps most importantly, pedestrians were window-shopping, totally oblivious that they were, only seconds ago, completely spirited away from our world (or more likely us from theirs). The parade of Volkswagen Buses that had terrorized the streets were missing, as was the homeless man, who only a moment before was murdered right in front of us. Car windows were shattered up and down the sidewalk, but there wasn’t even the hint of blood as we sprinted past the murder sight.
“Michael! Joshua!” Lance called after. “Where the hell have you two been?”
“That’s as good a guess as any,” Michael panted at a sprint, trying the best he could to keep up with me.
I ran all the way back to Elise’s house, cut down the driveway and thrust her door wide on its hinges. Everything was just as we’d left it, with two shattered pictures, books scattered across the floor, broken window, a splintered kitchen chair, and a soupy ceiling where the shotgun had imprinted. Only we weren’t alone. It wasn’t the man in the bowling cap this time, but something entirely else. Moaning seeped underneath the crack of her bedroom door. The sonic stench of it carried down the hall. Thrusting and banging added to its commentary.
“Joshua,” Michael gasped for a breath at the front door. He heard it too. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“I just need to see if she’s safe.” I said. “Elise!” I called out. Nobody answered. I hurried down the hall and opened the door. I’ll never forget what I saw in there.
Elise was on the bed totally naked and pressed to all fours while the pale bubbled-rear of a youthful man, too young to be the congressman, pounced on her from behind.
“Joshua!” She cried, rolling off the mattress, and hid behind the bed.
“What’s going on in here?” I knew perfectly well what was going on in there.
“Who’s this?” The naked boy with the pale bubbled-rear grabbed a pillow and held it over his crotch. He leaped off the bed and propped himself like a terrified mannequin in the corner. Pimples peppered his chin. “Is this your husband? Oh crap, don’t hurt me!” He started crying. “Crap! Crap! Crap! I don’t know anything!”
I ignored the nerd.
“Elise, we were supposed to spend the evening together. I’m late for an hour and you invite another man into your bedroom!”
“An hour? I tried calling you and calling you. You never came.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Joshua, you’re twenty-four hours late. I think your message was made clear when you deci
ded not to show.”
The alarm clock on her in-table flashed from 5:08 to 5:09pm. Time was on the move again.
“Elise, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. This morning we were out surfing and you told me we were getting together tonight at your apartment for dinner.”
The nerd tried to leave. I let him slip past me into the hall but as soon as he reached the living room I heard Michael ask him where he was going. He was pushed down into a chair for further questioning. Now apparently we were holding people hostage in Elise’s apartment…. without their pants on. How the tide had turned.
“Joshua. That wasn’t even this morning. That was yesterday. I waited and I waited.” Tears consumed her. She wiped her nose. “Just get out of here. I don’t want to see you right now.”
“Elise…”
“Just get out of here and leave me alone.”
I did exactly as her request demanded.
My car was still parked where I’d left it, emergency light blinking. We opened its doors, defeated, and climbed in.
“So what just happened back there?”
“You mean that nerd I saw my wife having sex with?”
“No, not that. The last hour of our lives, care to come up with an explanation?”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Michael. All I know is I was there and somehow you were there despite everyone else in the world not being there, and that homeless man whose been following me all across the country, he was there. And we watched him die there too.”
“Homeless man, care to explain?”
“And I figure Rod Serling must have been there giving opening and closing narration to our story, because I think we just took an unexpected detour in and out of the Twilight Zone.”
11
Susan rushed to her husband in tears. She said she’d called everywhere. Nobody could account for either of us. Both she and Elise were worried to death.
“Worried to sex, maybe.” I corrected her.
The Ford Mustang was left alone in front of the pub on Second Street, Susan said, but my Ford Country Squire was mysteriously absent from every single parking lot and driveway this side of Long Beach. Lance had to open the bar without him. She even filed a police report despite considering the possibility that we’d finally confessed our love for one another and run off to start up a new life.
I told her watching Michael water ski to Star and Stripes Forever was invigorating, but not that invigorating. She finally laughed, but probably out of sheer relief and not because she found my jokes to be funny. Just to be sure I told another. It was a knock, knock joke. She didn’t laugh that time.
We drove Saint Augustine over to my apartment complex a couple of blocks away. Aristotle hadn’t been fed in thirty-six hours. He was pissed. He puffed his cheeks, as though wanting to blow the three piggies house down, and pawed me in the crotch as a back up plan, seeing as how Plan A had failed him. I fed the hound, adding a slab of roasted pork for diplomatic relations. He swallowed it hole like a duck with a loaf of bread and came right back to my side, asking to be petted. United Nations crisis diverted.
I popped open my fridge, retrieved three Pabst Blue-Ribbon’s, handed two of them to Susan and Michael, and then sat around the living room explaining my account of the story from the time they left me at Marine Stadium to the moment Michael knocked on the door of Elise’s apartment, when the man with the EMINOR tattoo was only seconds away from snipping off a very important member of my manhood. At first I called it my wee-wee, but quickly retracted that term since it didn’t claim the size and stature of manhood that I was after.
“That’s fine, you don’t have to exaggerate,” Michael said. “We’re all friends here. You can call it what it is… wee-wee.”
“Look who’s talking.” Susan groaned at her husband with an extra dosage of spousal sarcasm, probably to relieve the tension, but I appreciated the backup.
“Good one, Susan.” I pulled two more beers from the fridge and tossed only one of them to her. Michael held his hands out. Nobody tossed him one. I drank the other.
Then Michael gave his account of the story. He had gone straight to the pub (while I drove to Trader Joe’s) and was using the bathroom in The Guide Dog when 5:04pm rolled around. When he returned to the bar everyone had disappeared, including his second in command, Lance. His first thought was that some elaborate prank was being pulled on him. Ha, ha. Very funny, guys, he said. Nobody popped out from under a table and yelled Happy Birthday, America or Surprise! He searched the kitchen. Even the chefs and the food they were preparing had mysteriously gone missing. He ran out front. No moving cars, no people. This isn’t funny anymore. He told whoever was around to listen. That’s when the thought occurred to him that the rapture had happened.
“Long Beach isn’t that Christian,” I said.
“I know. Really, Michael.”
He said he tried calling Susan on the phone. He tried calling me too. His cell had absolutely no service and the landline was dead. He heard the sound of a gurgling engine on the street. It was a Volkswagen Bus. He ran out flapping his arms. The two Pierrots in the passenger and drivers seat were as surprised to see him as he was of them. They told him to buzz off and flipped him the middle finger. Only instead of buzz they used a four-letter word. It began with an F and ended with K. It wasn’t FORK. They drove on.
Several minutes later Michael saw me hurry down Second Street in my Ford Country Squire, ignoring all traffic lights as I sped like hell on wheels. He said another Volkswagen Bus followed soon after. He knew exactly where I was heading, and ran as fast as he could towards Elise’s apartment. The whooping and wailing soon began, and the streets were flurried with activity. Volkswagen Buses came to life, driving up one street and down the other. He hid behind several cars to avoid detection, and as he turned the corner for Elise’s street, that’s when he saw them, the Lost Boys, as they hunted me down from different directions, met up on the driveway, and entered her apartment. When I asked about the wind and the darkening sky, and that horrific multi-faceted squeal, he was just as confused on the matter as we all were. We finished the rest of the story together, which brought us up to the present.
“Oh my lord.” Susan went ghostly pale. “I thought that story about the escaped convict with a hook for a hand was terrifying. You guys aren’t making this up to scare me, are you?” She might have been angry.
“Babe, I wish we were.”
“Michael, tell me you’re not making this up.”
“Babe, we’ve never been more serious about anything in our entire lives.”
“I… I don’t know how I can believe any of this.” Susan crossed her arms and fought off a shiver.
“You really think Joshua and I drove off all giddy with glee and hid ourselves for twenty-four hours as some outrageously annoying prank with an even more ridiculously absurd story to follow?”
“No,” she finally sighed.
“It’s like we were transported outside of time or something, if that’s at all possible,” I said.
“And when we re-entered time, we misplaced an entire twenty-four hours.” Michael snapped his fingers when finishing his sentence. “It’s what they wanted. They wanted Elise to think he’d deserted her.”
“But none of this makes any sense.” Susan shook her head. “Explain to me how these so-called Lost Boys were after you, Joshua.” She then turned to her husband. “And yet you were allowed access into it.”
“I don’t know, babe.” He said. “We’re just as confused and terrified about it as you are. But I gather one thing. It seemed evident from the beginning that I wasn’t supposed to be there. Everyone in the Twilight Zone was just as perplexed to see me as I was to see them.”
“That’s true,” I said. “Something, or someone, wanted you to do exactly what you did, and get me out of there.”
“The homeless man.”
Susan was the first to say it. I hadn’t thought of him in that light until then, but it made perfect se
nse. There was something so otherworldly about the street wanderer. I still couldn’t place it, but from that moment on I knew the homeless man, whomever he turned out to be, had interceded on my behalf. Perhaps he was a narrator of sorts. Perhaps he was the Rod Serling of my Twilight Zone experience. Either way he was dead.
I’d never be able to ask him his name, if it was indeed Murray, or where he came from and where he was going. I never even offered to put him up for the night let alone buy him a sandwich. He had exited time at exactly 5:04pm Pacific Standard Time, however that was humanly possible, to travel into the space between spaces. It was there that he died, and there, at exactly 5:04pm, that he would forever remain. Or maybe everything that we so far surmised about our time (or lack of time) spent in the Twilight Zone was wrong. Where was a quantum physicist when you needed one?
“So tell us,” Michael finally said. “You’ve been holding back. Tell us everything you know about this homeless man.”
I told them about that motel in Florida. I told them about Bakersfield. I told them about the dozen other places I’d seen him and perhaps just as importantly, the places I hadn’t. I told them everything that I knew.
“And now that we’re down the rabbit hole,” I concluded, “unlike Alice, who wrapped everything cleanly up by waking from a dream, can we ever truly find our way back out of it again?”
THE SEXAHOLIC
1
I didn’t want to see Elise again. Not so soon. Not after what had happened. And yet the circumstances surrounding the evening of July Fourth were so entirely incomprehensible that I felt an explanation was in order. Time, at least from my end of the spectrum, had seemingly come to a standstill while the rest of the world continued spinning on its axis. Twenty-four hours in fact. That’s how much time had elapsed, an entire twenty-four hours. And in that pocket of fast-forwarded time, my missing twenty-four hours, Elise had taken roll call, noted my desertion, and invited another man into her bedroom. I simply couldn’t understand any of it.
Wrong Flight Home (Wrong Flight Home, #1) Page 26