by Unknown
Curving to the left the corridor paralleled the auditorium. Both walls and carpet were deep red. Small orange spotlights cast pools of tangerine on the floor. Every fifteen feet a palm that had seen better days resided in a red pot.
The boy stopped and turned, smiling with satisfaction as he spied the writer was in pursuit.
Meredith stopped dead. Something was not right. The adrenalated pursuit had cleared out his system, the warning signs flashing.
No.
Dread gripped him, desire and fear in conflict.
He stumbled as he turned, heading back in the direction he’d come.
Meredith ran, the sense of threat increasing with every step. As he rounded the curve, approaching the bar area, his heart fluttered, a steel band tightening around his chest. He collided with the wall, clutching at his torso.
Oh God, I’m having a heart attack.
Then he was filled with a vision of the boy’s eyes. Inviting, placid, offering peace. He gasped.
The image persisted as his breath came in tight gasps. Then he sensed a presence behind him, felt a hand on his shoulder transferring a sense of emotion unlike any other. He turned, falling into the boy’s arms. Their tongues automatically entwined and he stroked the boy’s crotch, which felt full and heavy. After a moment the boy pulled away, yet it was not a rebuff. He smiled, squeezing Meredith’s crotch in return, began to unbutton his jeans, turning to face the wall.
Finally, he was in.
Moving gently, Meredith pulled the boy toward him, devoting his attention to the hymn of his thrusts. From the auditorium came a faint sound of applause mixed with screams.
The boy’s heat excited him further and he knew he could not last long. Tension in his groin rose like water filling a lock and the threshold was breached far quicker than he expected. Then, behind the bodily heat came a numbing coldness, a chill so sharp it cut into his cerebral cortex, disrupting the wave pattern of lust instinct for a split second that expanded into eternity. He opened his eyes and panicked.
Before him was the Void. Total, unforgiving, relentless. To ejaculate into such a place struck him with primal terror, the horror of the Void absolute. Surely, to give an offering to such a place would not be enough; he would be consumed without a trace. If he had sought the darkness before he had done so in error. Now he wanted no part of it.
Then it was gone.
Meredith withdrew as his cock jerked spastically, spitting his seed onto the humus lining the palm’s pot. He grunted. The boy stood still. For an instant the image of the void returned, then was gone as quickly as it had arisen. He felt suddenly sick, as if a cold ethereal hand grasped his scrotum, passing through the skin to penetrate his bowels. The boy turned to face him.
The smile was still on those ruby lips, but the light that had resided in his eyes was gone.
Meredith, dazed, was pushed gently to his knees: the boy’s erection appeared in front of his sweat-washed eyes. He opened his mouth. The offering stretched him to the limit. His eyes shut, the boy pushed into his throat, slapping him as he did so to force open his eyes.
“Look at me,” the boy said, his voice only a fraction above a whisper. “This is my body, this is my blood. Drink in remembrance of me.”
He withdrew, spraying the writer.
The world went white.
Meredith lay there for an uncertain time. Were minutes seconds, or the other way around? He had no idea, no sense of proportion. Eventually he wiped-the residue from his face, pulled himself upright, and moved toward the bar area, the sensation of a frozen band performing a five-finger exercise in his guts. Sweat crowned his brow,
Three people were at the bar. The woman behind the counter ignored him as she carefully wiped a glass. She was familiar. Where had he seen her? Her hair was the color of rotting wheat, but he couldn’t find the jigsaw piece to complete the picture. Two men were in front, one seated on a high stool. He turned to Meredith as the writer stumbled past at a snail-like pace. He, too, was familiar, causing further confusion in Meredith’s unfocussed mind. As he inched by he noticed the man’s fly was open, his penis hanging off the stool rim, puncture marks in the phallus manifested as stigmata. Where had he seen him?
(Screams)
Nails through flesh …
Thinking clearly required too much effort. Despite throwing up before entering the cinema he still felt drunk; the alcohol still in his system had him cornered, was ready to lay him out in the third round.
He shuffled into the street. The two thousand yards to the pensione took an eternity to cover.
Of course, the Three Weird Sisters were outside the impoverished Spanish-style hotel, its edges crumbling with age, the walls tattooed with a patina of carbon. Miss Piggy laughed at him as he careened by with the precision of a seasoned drunk. He tried to snarl “fuck you,” but it came out as “fug tu,” his speech slurring with every step. He’d never felt so tired.
As he came through the entrance of the pensione, the concierge looked up for an instant, then resumed watching the TV set behind the counter. The Englishman’s condition was nothing new; the old man had seen it many times. Nothing mattered to him anymore, hadn’t since the passion of his wife, yet he flinched when the guest kicked open the door to his room, realizing the fool had collapsed onto the creaking bed and wasn’t going to close it. He forced himself from the comfort of his armchair to trot down the hallway, pulling the door closed without looking in on the prone figure of il morto. He’d watched the process take place before—once had been enough—and if it took place behind closed doors, even if they were his own, he could convince himself it didn’t exist. The world was changing in strange ways and denial was his only defense. But the sex zombies, the emotionally dead, posed no threat to him. They stuck to their own kind, their bodies rotting as they performed their dance of empty desire. The old concierge grunted to himself, fully aware of his own mortality; he was not long for this world and wanted to live out his last few days as peacefully as possible. Let them inherit the earth.
Several minutes later he heard the bed creak through the thin wall. It would be the last noise to come from the room for some time.
Inside, despite the unbearable weight of exhaustion pushing down upon him, Meredith managed to raise himself from the mattress to discard his clothes and crawl between the dirty sheets.
It had begun.
The road lay before him, bright in the sexual flush of a newly aroused sun: a future of limited possibilities, restricted variations of the sex act, for their bodies were not strong. A barren future, predictable, life-negating, not life-affirming, sterile in its simplicity. Yet what faced Meredith did not appall. He welcomed it with open arms and mouth, and it in return welcomed him. Not with arms but with a multitude of genitalia and orifices: big ones, small ones, every taste, color, texture. A pornucopia of organs transformed from the frustrated parameters of the human state to that of a new flesh. Flesh, nerve endings, and blood that now coursed with a life—and death—of their own; a transmutational entity so powerful the host would atrophy within months.
In truth the transformation had begun long ago. A summation of desires misaligned, of emotions discarded, left to fracture in the cold expanse of a life misdirected.
Meredith lay between the dream and the desire, comfortable between the sheets of change. Somewhere in his cortex memories skipped like daguerreotypes, flickered, jerked, then faded. Fragmented scenes from his childhood, soft-edged with an innocence long lost, revolving one last time. He frowned and then sighed serenely in his sleep of the damned as the dream took shape, wiping the screen of the old, tired images, replacing them with visions of the future. The future inside his body.
Time would be short, but what a time. The fact there would be no laughter, no light, no love didn’t matter anymore. If indeed they had once truly mattered, they seemed now nothing more than trivial concerns, of little consequence to the wider scheme of death within life. That was all behind him. It was easier this way, lack of
choice soothing in its streamlined shape. And in the dream a line from a song crept unbidden to provide a momentary soundtrack: Don’t dream it, be it. One body, one belief.
He slept on, safe in the knowledge his Sisters outside were spreading their gospel to the heathens. All over the world it would eventually be the same: one Church, one Body, one Belief.
The Church would welcome fresh converts that night and there would be new films to watch, new stories to tell, Meredith’s amongst them. In the name of the Father and the Son the congregation would sing silent praises to the Gods of Flesh and Fluids.
He slept like a newborn baby, his shallow breath rising and falling in a psalm to the rhythm of the deathly desire.
SWEETIE
G. Wayne Miller
G. Wayne Miller works for the Providence Journal and has written several nonfiction books which require enormous amounts of research. In his “spare” time he finds the discipline to have written a novel, Thunder Rise, and a growing body of short stories which are so smoothly written, you don’t notice the barbs and sharp edges until it’s far too late. A story by Miller often has a vein of dark humor running along its pale underside, and this one is no exception. He lives in Pascoag, Rhode Island with his wife, Alexis, and their two daughters.
Tony’s driving fast.
Tony’s grinding his teeth.
Tony can’t get all this divorce crap out of his mind. It’s killing him. Just sucking the energy straight from his body. Messing up his job. Screwing up his finances. It’s gotten so bad lately it feels like his head’s going to explode.
He remembers yesterday, that incredible hassle at the IGA. All he wanted was iron pills, to fortify his body. You’d think that would’ve been simple, wouldn’t you? A great big store like that with a medicine aisle half a hundred feet long. But no. We’re temporarily out of iron pills, the pipsqueak clerk said. Sorry, sir. But you can’t pull fast ones on Tony. Tony knew, all right: the little pipsqueak was lying. The little pipsqueak was hiding them from him, no doubt on orders from the bitch, who was conspiring against him in extremely creative ways lately. That’s what Tony told the police when they came to calm things down, that it was all part of the conspiracy. That’s what he made sure they wrote into their report.
Tony keeps driving. He’s getting all worked up again. The bitch … one of these days, she’s going to get hers.
Jesus fuck Mary!
There’s something in the road! It’s blocking the way! It’s like it materialized out of thin air.
Tony hits the brakes.
Jesus. Damn near hit it.
Tony takes a huge breath. His temples are pounding and he’s trying to get a grip. What the hell is it? He squints. Looks like some kind of blanket, some kind of duffel bag or gunnysack. Maybe a sleeping bag, all ratty and torn.
Tony gets out of the car, a Hyundai. Instinct tells him to look up and down the road and so does. You’d think he was some kind of common criminal. Jesus, what divorce will do to a guy. He pats his underarm, to make sure his pistol’s still there. You never know what’s around the next corner.
But everything’s cool. No one in either direction. No houses. No other cars. Nothing but trees and fields and a long stone wall running up one side of this two-lane blacktop that dissects the Connecticut countryside.
Tony walks around to the front of his car. It’s a blanket, all right. One of those Army surplus jobs. What the hell’s a blanket doing in the road? What’s in the blanket? There’s definitely something in it. Something the size of an animal.
Oh Christ, he thinks. Some asshole’s dumped his dead dog out here in the middle of nowhere. These hicks will pull shit like that. Why the hell did he ever move out here, anyway? Because of her, of course. Because of Louise, the bitch.
Except it’s not a dog, as he discovers when he unwraps it.
It’s a baby.
A baby girl.
A dead baby girl.
And not a scratch on her precious little body. Not a cut or a bruise or a single drop of blood. He looks at her carefully, not at all repulsed by what he sees. How could he be? What a pretty young thing. Her eyes are open and blue as sky. Her hair is blonde, her skin as white and flawless as a pearl in a jewelry-store window. Not a stitch of clothing on, not even a diaper or a frilly little pink bonnet.
Should he touch her? Something inside of him wants to. Just once. Now, while nobody’s looking. That would be all right, wouldn’t it? If her father had happened upon her, that would be the first thing he’d do, wouldn’t it? Not just touch, but pick her up and give her a great big hug?
He won’t go that far. But he will let his finger brush her cheek. Nothing wrong with that.
What’s this?
Her skin is warm. Dear God, he thinks, maybe she’s still alive. Maybe all she needs is an emergency room.
Maybe just a couple of jolts with the paddles and then a ventilator and some heavy-duty drugs to pick her up. Tony feels frantically for a pulse, but he can’t find one anywhere. And she’s not breathing. He’s sure of that. He took a CPR course back in college. He’s forgotten some of it, but not the part about how to tell when someone’s stopped breathing.
No, Sweetie’s dead.
Say what?
Where’d that come from, that name? Just popped into his head, the way words sometimes will. But it fits, he thinks. That’s what’s so darn crazy. Sweetie fits. Poor little Sweetie, lying all by herself so dead in the road.
“Christ, now what?” Tony says.
He’s already decided he can’t leave her here. Can’t just continue on to work as if nothing’s happened. That wouldn’t be fair to Sweetie. That would be heartless and cruel, something a ghetto person would do, not someone of his character.
Tony gathers Sweetie into his arms and places her on the seat next to him. The blanket’s dirty but it’s all he has. He wraps it around her. Never know when you’ll run into some goddamn busybody, even on a lonely country road He buckles the seatbelt around Sweetie and puts his Hyundai into drive.
Where to? Now there’s a question.
It’s too late for the hospital. That much is clear. Sweetie’s dead. Sweetie’s dead. The thought keeps going through Tony’s head, over and over and over and making him so sad. Tears fill his eyes. It’s going to be tough to drive,
The police station.
Of course, he thinks. I’ll take her to the cops.
But almost immediately, doubt fills his mind. When I got to the front desk, he asks himself, what would I say? That I’m on my way to work, Officer, and I just thought I’d turn in this dead baby? Can you list it in lost and found?
No way. Tony’s no fool. He’s a certified public accountant. He knows about the authorities. He knows what they’ll do. They’ll have two options. First, they could charge him with a crime—and wouldn’t murder and kidnapping be a good place to start? Something along those lines. After a hearing at which no bail would be set, it’d be off to the pen.
The other option would be the forensic unit. See if he’s competent to stand trial. See if he needs rubber walls for, say, the rest of his life. Tony can see it now, how everything would unfold. Louise’s lawyer would get wind of things, and he’d trip all over himself getting to court, and he’d be telling the judge about how, Your Honor, Mr. Anthony Simeone is impotent, is incapable of biologically fathering a child, which is why my client has filed the divorce petition she has, and, well, certainly Your Honor can see how this played into Mr. Simeone’s sick mind when he killed this poor innocent child. If you look at the record, Your Honor, you’ll note this man was nearly arrested after an altercation involving iron pills at the IGA. Yes, Your Honor, you heard correctly: iron pills, they usually go for about five bucks a bottle. You’ll especially note that he has recently been hospitalized for nervous exhaustion, which followed several years of pharmaceutical treatment for an underlying depression. And while the hospitalization was at General Hospital, may I draw your attention to the fact that his admission was to Ward S
even? That he was discharged with a prescription for haloperidol—which isn’t exactly aspirin, Your Honor.
All lies, of course, especially talk of any chronic underlying depression, but who can trust judges? Who ever gets out of institutions? They’d stick needles in him and cart him away and Sweetie … poor Sweetie …
What would become of Sweetie?
No loving, caring parents left her there in the road. Any idiot could see that. Someone wanted to be rid of poor Sweetie. Some teenage welfare whore, probably, strung out on drugs and not a clue as to who the father might be. Tony can’t let her go back to a situation like that. Things being what they are, there’s every chance some liberal judge would give that mother a second chance. If not, the state would get her. That would be worse. Tony catches the evening news. Tony knows about foster homes and shelters … No. Tony can’t let any of that happen.
Tony pulls into his driveway.
For the first time since being served with papers, Tony is thankful for the bitch. At least she’s moved out. True, it was into that fuckhead Peter Downing’s place, but those two shacking up was only a matter of time, anyway. Better to get that messy detail out of the way. And Tony has the house, at least for now. Tony can be alone, which is all he wants lately.
Tony hits the switch to the overhead. The garage opens. Tony drives in and closes the door behind him. He uncovers Sweetie. Must be hot under that blanket. He lifts her in his arms. Her skin is very warm. He hopes it’s not a fever. When Tony was a kid, he got St. Joseph’s aspirin. They don’t sell it anymore. They sell St. Joseph’s acetaminophen.
How the world’s changed, Tony thinks as they go in.
He sets Sweetie down on the couch and dials the phone. As it’s ringing, he closes the front drapes.
“Rosalyn,” Tony says when his call’s answered.
“Tony,” says his secretary.