by Bassoff, Jon
I ducked behind a bend in the platform, body hidden beneath the shadows. I sat in waiting, my stomach tight from hunger, my throat dry from thirst. In my pocket was a single playing card, the queen of hearts, and I rubbed it compulsively, longing for a salvation that would never come.
I watched as they passed me along the tracks, and I counted four of them, their silhouettes visible from the glow of the lantern. The man in the front pulled along a creature that might have been a woman, and slung an axe over his shoulder. In the rear, two men were chasing after rats, slamming them against walls and placing the little corpses into a sack. The man with the axe was reading from a book…
“Man is born to live, to suffer, and to die, and what befalls him is a tragic lot. There is no denying this in the final end. But we must deny it all along the way.”
It was dangerous in these tunnels (humans turned animals with webbed feet and bat fangs, feeding on rats and maggots and each other), but I hadn’t eaten or drank in such a long time and I worried that I would soon collapse and be devoured by these beasts, so I rose from my hiding place and followed after the foursome, my left leg wounded and dragging behind my right.
Maybe a half mile down the track and I called out: “Hey! Help me, would you? I’m lost here. Help me, would you?”
They turned around in unison, and suddenly I felt a familiar dread, and I shivered, afraid that my past would catch up to my present. They stood there, all of them frozen in place, although I could see the axe glinting in the light.
Swallowing my dread and summoning courage, I moved toward the group and then stood in front of them, my hands raised in submissiveness. And now I got a better look at them. One of the men had a thick black beard and a mess of greasy hair that fell below his shoulders. He wore a necklace of what might have been rocks or teeth. Another had blackened eyes, like a raccoon, and both of his cheeks were covered with purple tattoo tears. The man with the axe wore slacks and a dress shirt and his face was cleanly shaven. The woman, meanwhile, was dwarfish and one side of her face was badly sunken. Her left arm was shrunken to the size of a baby’s. My heart stabbed with longing. I’d only just seen her, but I already loved her deeply…
The man with the strange necklace moved forward and narrowed his eyes. “Well, I’ll be a motherfucker,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to bother you. It’s just that I’m lost and I’m hungry and—”
“Is this who I think it is? Could it be?”
They all moved closer until I was completely surrounded.
“Christ,” said the man with the tattoo tears. “Christ.”
The man with the axe began giggling, softly at first, then louder and louder, until he was slapping his thighs and wiping tears from his eyes. The rest of them joined in on the hilarity. All except the woman with the shrunken arm.
Finally the laughter quieted, and the man with the axe, the man they called the mayor, stuck out his hand for me to shake. Not wanting to offend, I squeezed his hand, and all the while he shook his head, and now his expression had become mean and cruel.
“Charles Pierce,” he said. “You came back.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I think you’ve got me mistaken with somebody else. My name is Jack Tompkins and—”
And now they all started laughing again. “It’s hard to tell with you, Charles,” the mayor said.
I looked at the woman, and she didn’t say a word, just stared at me with blank eyes. I wondered about rescuing her. I wondered about loving her.
“Why don’t you come with us, Charles,” the mayor said. “Why don’t we cook up some rats for you to eat? Why don’t we get you some fresh water? I’m glad you came back, Charles. I really am.”
And now the dread and fear were suffocating, and I tried to make a dash for it, but the man with the tooth necklace blocked my way and locked his arm around my neck. He and the man with the tattoo tears dragged me down the track, and the rats were shrieking with joy.
* * *
It wasn’t too much later that we sat around a trash can filled with flames and I watched as they roasted rats on a paring knife.
The man with the tattoo tears sliced off the head and handed it to me, and I ate gratefully, while they watched me, eyes never shifting.
“She did long for you,” the mayor said. “Never said so much, of course, but I could tell. She was smitten.”
I didn’t answer. I finished my rat and wiped the mess from my mouth. The man with the necklace gave me another one. Still ravenous, I sunk my teeth into that one as well.
Velma Barfield ate Cheez Doodles and Coca-Cola. Timothy McVeigh two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream. John Wayne Gacy a dozen deep-fried shrimps, a bucket of KFC chicken, French fries, and a pound of strawberries.
The mayor rose to his feet and stood behind me. The men watched, both of them laughing nervously. The mute shook her head and tried to mouth something, but it was too late.
I turned around and saw the mayor raising his axe, his eyes bulging, his face twisted. And as he came down, as the blade sliced into my flesh, I wished somebody were there to paint the scene.
About the Author
Jon Bassoff was born in 1974 in New York City and currently lives in a ghost town somewhere in Colorado. He was called the “king of creepy crime-horror fiction” by Tom Piccirilli, a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award. His debut novel, Corrosion, won the DarkFuse Readers’ Choice Award for best novel, and two of his novels, Corrosion and The Disassembled Man, have been adapted for the big screen. The Blade This Time is his fifth novel.