Slave Stories

by Bahr, Laura Lee

  It was always like this—when I was hungry, when I was cold, when the world hated me, when my mom was sick and when she died, Tess was always there—she loved me, and I was not alone.

  <~~O~~>

  It’s a piece of glass that gets us. First, Tess yelps and then begins to cry like I’ve never heard. I plead with her to be quiet, I pet her and hold her and try to figure out what’s wrong. She limps for a few feet; finally she lies down and refuses to walk any more. “Come on, Tess,” I whisper. I wrap my arms around her neck and pull, but she refuses to move.

  “Who’s there?” a woman calls. There’s a click and then skinny beam of a penlight is shining on us.

  “What’s wrong with your dog?” The woman walks closer.

  “I don’t know. I think it’s her foot.”

  The woman shines the light on the pads of Tess’ feet. “See here? It’s a piece of glass.”

  The woman reaches for Tess’ foot. Tess growls, low in her throat.

  “Look, I can take care of it.”

  “What’s your problem? You don’t trust anybody?”

  “Look, I can take care—”

  The woman ignores me and lifts Tess’s paw, despite her growls.

  “Your dog isn’t going any farther. I have a kit at my place, just over there.” She motions toward the other side of the road with her penlight. “There’s no way you and your dog are getting any farther. Stay here, and I’ll get the stuff.” She turns off the light, and she’s gone.

  “Come on, Tess.” I pull at Tess’s neck again, but Tess won’t budge.

  I think about Mark’s vial in my pocket. I could take it now, and we’d be gone before the woman, or any Grinderz she might call, came.

  Tess nuzzles my chest and whimpers again. I stroke her head and I realize if there’s any chance at all, we can’t give up now.

  The woman isn’t gone long, and she turns on her penlight as soon as she approaches us. She squats down and says, “Your dog—she’s got black eyes just like my Sadie had. She was the best dog I ever had. She was black, and so sweet, sweet just like your dog. What’s her name?”

  “Tess.”

  The woman ruffles around in the small bag she’s brought with her. “Now, this is going to hurt. You’ve got to hold onto Tess. Make sure she doesn’t bite me; the best dog will bite when it hurts.”

  I wrap my arms around Tess’s shoulders and hold her close. I whisper in her ear, telling her she’s a good girl.

  Tess growls again when the woman lifts her paw, but I just keep whispering in Tess’s ear, holding her to me. She yelps, but then the woman says, “Got it. I’m going to put some ointment on her paw. It’s of my own make, so it’s good. And then I’ll wrap it up. You keep holding onto her.”

  The ointment smells fowl, and Tess continues to whine for a moment, but then she’s quiet. She tilts her muzzle up licks my jaw.

  “See that?” the woman says. “It’s good stuff. Where are you and your dog headed?”

  “Wire.”

  “What for?”

  “My mom’s there.”

  “Right,” It’s obvious she doesn’t believe me. “Why would a girl and her dog be headed to Wire in the middle of the night?”

  “My mom is sick.”

  “It seems to me, you’re sneaking out of town and doing a terrible job of it. You in some kind of trouble?”

  “No. I told you—I’m trying to get to my mom.”

  “You’re not getting there on foot.”

  And now I start to cry. “I’ve got to get to Wire. If it were your mom, wouldn’t you want to get to her?”

  “My mom left me on the street to die when I was young.”

  I consider telling her I’m sorry, but I don’t. We sit there in quiet, and I try to figure out how to get Tess up and walking.

  Finally the woman says, “I’m tired. I have half a mind to leave you out here by yourself; I know you’re in some kind of trouble. This is the thing—there’s very few good people in this town. Everyone is in it for themselves, except for a few of us. There’s a few of us who are still trying to make this town an okay place to live. Now, if you’ll trust me, I’ll take you to my place, give you a meal and maybe with a little rest you’ll be on your way.”

  “How far is Wire from here?”

  “Miles, girl. Miles.”

  Tess and I follow the woman to her one room home, more a closet than a home. The overhead light is dim, but its sodium light illuminates enough that the woman immediately figures out why we’re on the run.

  “She’s all black. That’s what it is, isn’t it?”

  “Are you going to turn us in?”

  The woman shakes her head. “If my Sadie were alive right now, we’d be in the same mess as you.” She pulls a blanket from the mattress on the floor and hands it to me. “Wrap that around your girl.”

  Tess is already lying on the floor, watching the woman. I wrap her in the blanket and we wait while the woman stirs a pot over her hotplate. When she feeds us, it’s watery soup, but it’s the best we’ve eaten since the Black Dog got my mom.

  The woman sits down on the floor next to us, and runs her hands through her chopped gray hair. Finally she says, “I have a friend with a car. She’s squirrely, but she’ll do a lot if you have anything of value.”

  I decide to take a chance. I pull out the vial. “It’s Q,” I say.

  The woman pulls back. “You deal?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “It was a gift so I had something of value. So I could start over.”

  “Okay, then.” The woman sighs. “I’ll go talk to my friend.”

  Tess and I fall asleep, just before sunrise, and we sleep through the day. Just before evening, we wake and the woman feeds us more soup. “My friend will be here early in the morning, while it’s still dark. You’ll be into Wire just before sunrise. Maybe Wire is better, maybe it’s not, but you sure don’t want to be wandering around in the dark.”

  True enough to her word, she wakes us in the night, and we are loaded into a car that smells of smoke and old food, and we drive toward Wire.

  The driver is young, with a beautiful face and a brilliant expensive smile she obviously didn’t get in Ersatz. She parks the rusted beater at the edge of town, and the engine idles. I look up into the rear-view mirror and our eyes meet. She nods and I hand over the vial. She smiles that shiny bright grin and winks. The old woman is sitting in the passenger seat. She looks over her shoulder and reaches her hand over the front seat towards me. She shakes my hand and says, “You take care of that black-eyed girl.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and hold her hand for a moment.

  Tess and I get out of the car and cross over into Wire as the sky fills with morning light. Tess sniffs the air. It’s a strange thing, I think, how the air is so different between here and Ersatz. The air in Wire seems cleaner, somehow. A young boy runs across the street with a black dog. Tess gives a little bark, and I can’t help but hope this bodes well for what happens next.

  Ruins (Poems)

  —Seb Doubinsky

  memories of my 1980s

  electricity was gray then

  and Doc Martens were stolen from the dead

  lips smelled of tobacco and knuckles of ether

  dreams were of bigger cities

  or even bigger cities

  in ruins if possible

  yes that would have been a plus

  then

  in my 80s

  the tired jeans the sad leather jackets

  the dark silver rings and the roving eyes

  ah us young godless gods aware of their own mortality

  why did we leave our shields and armors

  to rust in the neon dust?

  we moved slowly towards dawn

  thinking it was sunset

  and our disappointment

  was tremendous

  memories are moving transparencies

  a train that is always late

  a plane that never arrives

>   a car that never stops

  and our face

  a transparency upon transparencies

  we didn’t like poetry

  we didn’t believe in poetry

  we were poetry

  raw hopeful and unrhyming

  it was the time

  when love not death

  smelled of cold tobacco

  and hate had painted nails

  and a Lulu haircut

  “no one is innocent” you said

  and I wiped the tear from your cheek

  which burned my hand like acid

  the beat was distant

  and our hearts

  our hearts

  were full

  of concrete

  and electricity

  oppression

  aggression

  revolution

  were our lyrics

  and the ghosts

  that still haunt you

  even though

  you have shielded

  your small ears

  with your gold

  decorated hands

  forgetting that

  you have left thus

  your most precious parts

  unprotected

  our sun shone yellow over the gray roofs

  warming our faces and the tip of our fingers

  and our white breath lead us on

  towards a new day of love and self-destruction

  Hiroshima was another

  word for love then

  we raced on the escalators

  on the subway tracks

  and in the empty supermarkets

  we raced not to compete or to win

  but to give our kisses

  an aftertaste of breath and blood

  rain was our best friend

  whispering words of comfort

  that erased the lies of the sun

  Tiny Iris

  —Andrew Hook

  Truth was, he had held worse jobs.

  Hank took a shot of whisky when Jonstone wasn’t looking. An oasis in his pocket. He’d begun drinking thirty years previous and hadn’t stopped. Reality distorted like the world viewed from the bottom of a swimming pool, but it was the best kind of reality. He could live like that. Sometimes it might ripple and the quiver would affect him, but mostly he lay looking up, watched a succession of girls go by. The bottle in his pocket was a top-up. It kept him ticking over.

  In front of him gaped a succession of rectangular pigeonholes. Street names set in Letraset burnt his eyes when he focussed, but after a repetitious week he knew the matrix without needing to look at it. His right arm bent at the elbow and flicked envelopes into spaces just wide enough. Unlike Kricfalusi who used to be a darts player and had a different rhythm, Hank could keep the movement going perpetually rather than working in threes.

  The only time he liked to work in threes was when there was a girl either side of him.

  He pocketed the bottle and gripped a pack of white and brown envelopes elastic-banded together. Slipping off the elastic he kept it on his wrist. You never knew when you needed a weapon. The envelopes shot out of his fingers as though they were pulled by wires into the rectangles. Occasionally there might be a postcard but he was reluctant to look at those. Adjacent to the matrix for Ersatz there were buckets for the next nearest sprawls: Wire City, Shell County, Spittle, Moosejaw. He didn’t know what went on there. He might have been birthed in one of those places, but whether it was the alcohol or the overlords those details were now forgotten.

  Knocking off after an eleven hour shift he pushed soup around a bowl in the canteen, avoiding the looks of others. Kricfalusi was in deep conversation with Baby Guts. Hank kept away from them. Sometimes Kricfalusi would approach him for advice at the track, as though a loser like him could run a big deal. He was sometimes mistaken for a learned man. He didn’t care to push that, but didn’t negate it either.

  In Ersatz you needed to keep yourself to yourself, not deviate from your expected persona. Any diffraction was an aberration. Before you knew it you’d be transferred to the mining enclaves, pointlessly digging out nothing of any importance until the day you died. At least in the post office you could consider you had purpose. Not that Hank ever knew anyone who had actually received a letter. When he started on the mail run he only delivered to derelict properties.

  He sank into Morgan’s Bar on the way home. Shadows barely entered his peripheral vision. The clientele were like oil on water. It didn’t pay to look too hard into those dark places. You might see the Black Dog looking back.

  Hank shrugged his shoulders, held the pose, buckled in on himself. His clenched fingers around the beer bottle made a straightjacket from which his lips were the only exit.

  It was night when he pulled into his driveway, scattering ghosts and cats alike. The girl from the night before wasn’t there. He couldn’t tell if she had taken anything. Remembered next to nothing. Collapsing onto the sofa, one leg hanging over the arm, he dreamt of a better life. A life he never remembered upon waking.

  <~~O~~>

  “Hey Chinaski!”

  Jonstone was on his back. He pretended not to hear. Then Jonstone got the bullhorn out and everyone had to listen.

  Jonstone jerked his head and thumb towards his office. Maybe they were linked. Hank scattered the remainder of envelopes in his hand and followed him in. The door wouldn’t close due to a patch of chewing gum on the floor.

  “I’ve been watching you,” Jonstone said.

  He left it at that. Allowed a pause enough for a lesser man to start wondering if it were good or bad. A big enough pause for someone to incriminate themselves with something Jonstone didn’t know by hastening a patchy excuse. Hank just kept quiet.

  Jonstone put his hands on his hips. “You’re doing good, but you can do better. How many letters you shift in a day?”

  Hank thought: four, five hundred? “Seven hundred,” he said.

  “Whatever the figure it’s impressive. But there’s those reckon you can do more. What’s holding you back?”

  Hank wondered if the whisky had been noticed. But they all had their vices. Kricfalusi sometimes killed people. Then he knew where Jonstone was headed. The only thing preventing him doing more was time.

  He didn’t voice it. “Whisky?” he said.

  Jonstone didn’t even shake his head. “We’re increasing your hours,” he said. “Don’t want your talent going to waste.”

  “What’s in it for me,” Hank said.

  “Peace and quiet. We’ll get you working solo. How does that sound?”

  It sounded like an echo that wasn’t worth repeating.

  “When do I start?” Hank glanced at the clock over Jonstone’s desk. It wasn’t yet ten in the morning. He’d been working since eight.

  “We’ll roll it through,” Jonstone said. “No point wasting time. You knock off at six am.”

  Hank’s fists balled in his overall pockets.

  The day dragged like a gorilla with its knuckles on the floor.

  Kricfalusi bailed out at seven. “So long chum.”

  Hank heard the silent P at the end of the sentence.

  He needed the work. He knew the alternative. More work. Work ’til you dropped, became fodder for the overlords. Even in the nihilistic zone that was Ersatz a strip of humanity hung on like pastrami between rotten teeth. He flicked envelopes into rectangles ’til his right elbow moved of its own accord. Until he was machine.

  Around 4:44 he felt it might be his last day on Earth. He took another slug of whisky and the next envelope he touched was torn. A photograph shot out of it, the envelope hitting one rectangle and the image another. He cursed. Stepping across the metre gap that separated him from the matrix he plucked each item out with different hands.

  The photo was cracked. A Polaroid. Looked like it had been taken some time ago. A woman was naked, her body bent at the waist like she was affecting an impossible pose. Tiny tarnished cymbals with tassels covered her nipples. Her
legs were positioned so that Hank couldn’t tell if she were shaven. He took another shot of whisky. There was something about her. He turned the photo over. Nothing was written on the reverse.

  He sat for a moment on a chair he’d never used. Rubbed his eyes. The envelope was torn along one of the shorter ends. He pinched it and it gaped, a literary maw. Easing the letter out he saw it was written on tracing paper with pencil. Holding it to the light confused it, lettering showed both sides. Looking around, Hank took himself over to Jonstone’s office, flattened the letter on a blotter that looked like a squid had been murdered there, and turned on the desk lamp.

  Hey, it began, here’s that photo I was telling you about. You know what’s needed right now. Put the R in evolution. Address is on the other side. You want favours?

  There was a signature. Hank squinted. Tiny Iris.

  He looked around. Wondered if it was a set up. But it was too random. He memorised the address. Tore the letter into pieces and pushed them against the whisky bottle in his pocket. During the remainder of the shift he took out a piece at a time and ate it. He stuffed the photograph down the front of his pants.

  Come six am the day shift filtered in like sunlight.

  Hank slung his jacket over his shoulder and walked stiffly out of the post office. He wouldn’t head home just yet.

  <~~O~~>

  The address was at the end of a long line of fetish markets. He walked it. If he took his car it would be stripped, totally fucked.

  The smog was so thick he couldn’t see more than one person at any time. Terrible music blasted from boomboxes, assaulting his ears. Wise guys, murderers, kids no more than eleven with flick knives in their pockets, child prostitutes, the detritus of the population floated towards him out of the smog and away again as though he were the central figure in a burning zoetrope.

  The canvas awnings of the markets were layered with grime, anchoring them to the sidewalk. His eyes, suddenly independent of his brain, shot from side to side, from fetish to fetish. Hank was an alcoholic womanizing misanthrope, but even he had to blink away the sights. He swallowed bile—his first meal of the day. A long time ago he recalled some Spanish surrealist movie and the abhorrent contents of a box which fascinated a blonde prostitute. Yet his memory was as fogged as the smog and within seconds he couldn’t recall the thought.