Cut Corners Volume 1

by Ramsey Campbell

But the presence of the soldiers wasn’t very reassuring. On my way to the park, I saw two soldiers beating a man on the sidewalk. That usually happened to homeless people who’ve wandered beyond the boundaries of the tent cities. This man didn’t look like a homeless person, but so many homeless people were decently dressed lately that it was hard to tell who was and who wasn’t. We’d been told that the homeless are likely terrorists because they’re desperate and will do anything for a little money, which made them vulnerable to the offers of Muslim terrorist agents living secretly among us. But the only people the homeless were likely to hurt were themselves. It had been reported that suicides had skyrocketed in the tent cities around the country.

  I passed a lot of empty buildings with FOR LEASE signs in the windows and even more with signs advertising going-out-of-business sales, so there would be more empty buildings soon. There seemed to be more of those every time I left the house. The streets weren’t as busy as they used to be with gas prices so high, and the thin traffic gave the city a strange atmosphere. Sometimes it looked like it was in the process of being evacuated, or as if everyone were fleeing of their own free will. The only signs of growth were in the tent cities.

  It seemed like this had happened suddenly, but it hadn’t. I remembered when we elected our first black president. It seemed like such a hopeful sign, as if we had finally progressed to a point only dreamed of not so long ago. People wept the day of his inauguration because it seemed we had reached some long fought for goal. So many thought it would heal some of the damage done by the previous administration, which had been so unpopular. But we all know how that worked out. The damage was only accelerated. Then we elected our first woman president, another apparent milestone, seemingly a sign of progress, growth and maturity. Many thought it would usher in a wave of positive changes for our ailing country. Oh, there were changes, all right. Big ones. But they only made things worse.

  For decades, there had been growing evidence that no one in Washington, D.C. was working for the citizenry. But we were too busy with our video games and all the fun new gadgets on the market, too busy keeping up with the latest talent competition on TV or the latest scandalized politician or celebrity, or surfing porn, or whatever it is we do instead of paying attention to the world around us. And those who were paying attention were too busy fighting over whose political party had the biggest penis to notice what was being done to the country. The two-party system proved to be an effective distraction. It became more and more obvious that not only were we the people not a high priority, we weren’t even on the list. But it took us far too long to notice. When we finally woke up to the fact that the two political parties we were fighting over were both taking us in the same direction, it was too late.

  Those parties never stopped saying the same things they’d always said, but it became pretty obvious it was all scripted - like the phony “reality TV” shows we knew so much more about than the workings of our own government - and nobody really knew who was in charge. We just knew it wasn’t us. And it hadn’t been for a long time.

  Everything’s upside down, inside out. We seem to be in the middle of some major construction - the country is being rebuilt, but into what, and by whom? It was allowed to go on so long that … it soon became too late to care.

  It was like watching a foreign-language film without subtitles and trying to keep up with events that didn’t make any sense. Just thinking about it all made my head hurt, made my stomach sick. But it kept my mind off of those things that kept coming out of my body. As horrible as the country’s situation was, it was much easier to think about than what those things were that dropped out of me and plopped into the toilet, then scurried out of the bowl and into the walls before I could get a good look at them.

  To my right, I heard a woman screaming and I slowed down because the sound was rapidly getting louder. She ran into the road with a police officer close behind. He grabbed her long hair and jerked her to a stop, then raised his baton and hit the backs of her knees with it. She started to go down, but he broke her fall by dragging her out of the road by her hair and back to the sidewalk. She screamed in pain as I rode on.

  The only difference between the police officers and the soldiers was the uniform. I didn’t know whose side they’re on, only that it wasn’t ours.

  Amber was waiting for me in our usual spot - the bench under the huge old oak tree by the duck pond - with our lunch in a brown paper bag. Behind the bench, I leaned my bike against the tree, wiped sweat from my brow with the back of my hand, then walked around to join her. She was crying.

  “What’s wrong?” I said as I sat down beside her.

  She quickly tried to compose herself, but couldn’t stop the tears or the small hitching sobs.

  “My brother’s been arrested,” she said. Her younger brother Rob was gay. “He’s being sent to one of the therapy centers.”

  Therapy centers were places that “cured” homosexuality using reparative therapy, once denounced by every professional medical, psychiatric and scientific organization in the country but now fully recognized and endorsed - even mandated - by the United States government as an effective treatment for homosexuality. The centers were set up in abandoned military bases and state hospitals that had been closed down. There was little information to be found about them and they weren’t covered by the media. Rumor had it that not everyone who went into the therapy centers came out. Those who did weren’t the same.

  I got a queasy feeling in my stomach, as if I were in an elevator that had suddenly and unexpectedly dropped. I knew how close Amber was to her brother.

  “I’ve been looking forward to this lunch with you,” she said, “but now … this. I feel like … like I’m coming apart. Like I’m just breaking up into little pieces. And it’s not even the worst thing.”

  “What else?”

  She shook her head hard, sucking her lips between her teeth. “It’s too … I can’t … it sounds so crazy. You’ll think I’m … I don’t know … sick, or something.”

  I put my arm around her. Touching her made me queasy, too, but in a good way. We’d done nothing together yet, although we wanted to. Desperately. It just wasn’t safe. “I won’t, I promise. How crazy can it sound? I mean, look around you. Everything’s crazy now. The standard for crazy has changed. I’ve got … some crazy stuff going on in my life, too. Stuff I … keep to myself. Because it sounds so … weird. So I know what you mean. Please tell me.”

  She turned to me and moved so close, I could feel her breath on my face. “I just want to be with you right now. Naked, in a bed, where we can hold each other. My plan was to take you back to my apartment so we could be together and just fuck the consequences. You know? But … I don’t know if I can go back to my apartment because … because of what’s there.”

  “What’s there, Amber?”

  “If I tell you, you’ll think I’m -”

  “No, I won’t.” I felt a sense of urgency suddenly, as well as dread. I turned toward her, clutched her upper arms and shook her gently as I whispered, “You have to tell me. Now.”

  She struggled to get the words out. “Well, things … strange things … have been … coming out of my body lately.”

  ***

  I was not alone after all. Everything Amber told me was a summary of what had been happening to me.

  It had started a few weeks ago with a slightly painful bowel movement, immediately followed by flopping, splashing sounds in the toilet, and when I stood, another splash and the sound of something wet scurrying over the tile floor and out the slightly open bathroom door. It didn’t happen with every bowel movement and followed no pattern. I was awakened in the middle of the night a few times by the sensation of something moving inside my throat and mouth, just in time to feel it scurry over the covers, then hear it whispering over the carpet as it rushed out of the bedroom.

  All of the same things had happened to Amber with one difference. She told me - averting her eyes with embarrassment - that wh
ile masturbating on her couch one night, her orgasm was accompanied by the sensation of something exiting her vagina, followed by the sound of soft, wet pattering over the hardwood floor of her small apartment.

  “Now I hear them in the walls,” she whispered, leaning close to me. “It’s like they’re … gathering. Waiting for something.”

  “For what?”

  “I … I don’t know. Something.”

  “You think they’re going to do something?”

  “Not yet.”

  “When?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe when … there’s enough of them.”

  That was a chilling thought.

  “I took the rest of the day off work. Come home with me. I don’t want to go there alone, and I … I just want to be with you.”

  We put my bike in the back seat of her car and drove to her apartment. It was old, small and cluttered but clean. She stopped in the living room, just inside the door, turned to me and whispered, “Listen.”

  We remained still for about ten seconds, listening to the silence, until -

  Something rustled in the wall to my right.

  Amber’s large eyes looked all around the apartment before she whispered, “I hear them every now and then. Moving around in the walls.”

  “Me, too. Carly thinks we have mice. I was just relieved that she heard them, too. I thought I was … I don’t know …”

  “Losing your mind?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah. I was afraid of that, too. Kiss me. Please.”

  I kissed her. It wasn’t the first time we’d kissed, but it was the first time in privacy, without the need to be careful or rush. She pulled away suddenly and said, “Wait.” We went to the tiny kitchen and she put the bag and her purse on the counter, removed her cell phone and took the batteries out. Then she went to the living room and unplugged the television and satellite box.

  “Call me paranoid, I don’t care,” she said. “If the place is bugged and they catch us, we’ll both go to prison. And it’ll be worse for you because you’re married.”

  I did the same with my cell phone and put it on an end table. Everyone took it for granted now that the government was listening, watching and tracking everyone, everywhere. She grabbed my hand and led me to the bedroom, then turned and kissed me as she began frantically unbuttoning my shirt.

  “Wait, wait,” I said. “I’m really sweaty from riding my bike in the heat. I’d feel a lot better if I could take a shower.”

  “Oh, sure, sure,” she said, catching her breath. “Right through that door.”

  I smiled. “Would you like to join me?”

  “That shower’s too tiny for two people. You go ahead. I’m gonna clean up in here. Towels and washcloths are on the shelves above the toilet.”

  It was an awfully tiny shower; I felt a bit claustrophobic in it. The pipes rattled and groaned and it took a long time for the water to stop being brown, and then to warm up. I found a bottle of body wash, lathered up, then rinsed off.

  Amber’s towels were thick, heavy and luxurious. I suspected she’d had them for a long time; they would cost a fortune now. I scrubbed dry, then wondered if I should put my clothes back on or just enter the bedroom naked. It’s the kind of thing that always tripped me up in relationships. Having had so little experience with them, I was always afraid I was committing some kind of breach of etiquette. I compromised by putting on my boxers and my shirt, which I left unbuttoned.

  When I entered the bedroom, I heard a strange sound. It was soft but … wet. Amber was lying on the bed. At first glance, I thought she was covered by a thick, rumpled blanket under which she was moving slightly, rhythmically. With the quiet wet sound accompanying that movement, I thought for a brief, titillating moment that she was masturbating. But none of that was true.

  I stood there for what seemed a long time, blinking a lot, I think, my jaw slack. Only seconds passed, but it felt like it took a long stretch of minutes to make sense of what I was seeing.

  There was no blanket. Amber’s body was covered with small, grey, starfish-like creatures, each about the size of a toddler’s hand. They glistened as they made little humping motions on their body, and each creature made a faint, whispery sucking sound. There were so many of them, though, that the sound was loud enough for me to hear as soon as I entered the room. Beneath the layer of small, moist creatures, Amber’s body lay perfectly still.

  They shifted and moved over her, changing places as they sucked, never still, never staying in one place for long. Their movements increased as I watched, as if they were searching for something. When I got a glimpse of two of Amber’s exposed ribs, streaked with blood, I understood that they were consuming her so rapidly that they were moving around to look for more flesh to devour.

  Had she screamed? Had she called for help? Shouted my name? I couldn’t imagine her not crying out when the creatures came out of the walls to attack her. But above the rattle of the pipes and the constant hiss of the shower, I’d heard nothing.

  My entire stomach seemed to push itself up my esophagus and into my throat as I watched the creatures slowly, one by one, remove themselves from Amber. The sucking sound gradually diminished as they moved to the bed and surrounded her in a pool of moistly glimmering grey. They left behind something that used to be Amber, a blood-smeared figure of bones that had been cleaned of every last bit of tissue. Some of them remained inside - in the abdominal cavity and under the ribcage, still sucking and humping, still feeding. But it wasn’t long before they, too, began to leave the skeleton and join the others on the bed.

  I felt a rush of panic as I realized I was standing there, mostly naked, exposed to those creatures. But the fear that they would attack me next passed quickly. They weren’t interested in me. They were done. I somehow understood that their hunger had been for Amber alone. This feeding was what they had been waiting for … in the walls … waiting … waiting for that moment when -

  … there’s enough of them, Amber had said.

  There was no time to feel anything. I had to get out of there and take with me any sign of my presence.

  ***

  Outside in the heat, I immediately began to feel the itchy sting of perspiration forming on my neck and back. I got my bike from her car and began riding. I took side streets and alleys, avoiding main thoroughfares. As I rode, I had to keep wiping away the tears.

  They had come out of Amber’s body, just as they had mine, and secreted themselves in the walls, waiting until there was enough of them to accomplish their goal. And mine - my … whatever they were - waited for the same thing. We couldn’t be the only ones, Amber and myself. There had to be others. Were the walls at home also hiding things that had come out of Carly’s body? Things she hadn’t told me about, just as I hadn’t told her? Things that were waiting to do to her what had been done to Amber … and what would be done to me?

  Maybe everyone had them. Maybe they were everywhere, hiding, waiting. And we had been so frightened by their arrival that we blocked them out … occupied ourselves with other things … because we just didn’t want to face up to the truth that something that horrible was really going on.

  I rode my bike aimlessly through the city for a while, but then decided to go home. There was no point in putting it off any longer.

  Table of Contents

  THE ADDRESS - Ramsey Campbell

  CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO WOMEN OVERHEARD AT MY DENTIST’S OFFICE - Bentley Little

  AUTOPHAGY - Ray Garton