by Ray Cluley
“He’s my friend,” I said, “but he’s gone, Frances.”
“That’s not up to us,” he said.
We made a stretcher for Frank. It was agreed without conversation that we’d leave the gas station behind as soon as we could.
Cassie gathered our supplies. When the stretcher was done I went through the pockets of the dead and said my goodbyes.
We didn’t bury anybody.
S
Four days later they told me about demons with dicks, devil babies, and a mercy killing. I took a moral from the tale and smothered Frank that same night and in the morning we left him by the road still strapped to his stretcher.
We travelled south all morning. I learned that Frances was a mechanic, and that for a short while he and Cassie had travelled by car. I learned that Cassie had owned sixteen dolls and teddies and I was told each of their names. I learned her father had been a school teacher and her mother a police officer, back when we needed such things.
I didn’t tell them anything about me other than a few stories about the others I’d travelled with. They figured it out on their own, though. Well, Cassie did. I’d travelled with Jones, George and Frank for the best part of a year and they never found out. Five days with this little girl and I’m asked, “Is Charlie short for Charlotte?”
Frances was as surprised as I was, and after the surprise it was too obvious to deny.
“Yeah.”
“Charlotte’s pretty,” she said.
“Charlotte doesn’t want to be pretty,” I said back.
Which was why I’d cropped my hair right down to my scalp and let it grow everywhere else. I farted, belched, and scratched my crotch. Strapping down my chest wasn’t much of a problem because there wasn’t much there to begin with.
“Why don’t you want to be pretty?” Cassie asked. “My mom was pretty.”
Frances knew the answer. He told Cassie not to pry. Already he was looking at me different.
I didn’t know what these penitentary places were, but I knew places like them, and probably a few places worse. Before Jones and George and Frank I belonged to a group who used me by night and called me demon by day to feel better about it. Sometimes, when we met others, I’d be loaned out in exchange for food, water, ammunition. It wasn’t until I got pregnant that it stopped. Poor little Beth, spat from my poisoned loins in a flood of blood, reluctant to live in the world we’d given her.
They left me to die with her, and so I did.
And then Cassie came and reminded me of how things were, and how they could be.
S
“Left corner,” said Frances.
Another fucking gas station. Like the one where we’d met, this one had a store and a bay for vehicle repair and two pumps out front, though one had been knocked down and lay like a blocky corpse in a dusty shroud. Unlike the other gas station, this one had people in it that were alive. One of them was leaning in the corner of the walled roof, a rifle pointing to where we stood in the road. The sun shone from his weapon in little winks of light, otherwise it was a good position.
“Seen,” I said, though there wasn’t much I could do about it from here.
Cassie was strapped in behind Frances, unseen. “We could move on,” she said softly.
“There’s another one in the repair well,” I said, watching the man carefully adjust the angle of his rifle so it pointed up for a head shot if he needed it.
“Charlotte, we could move on.”
I hissed at Cassie, “Ssh.”
From behind the standing pump emerged a bearded man. He held a pistol down by his knee and raised his other hand slowly in greeting.
“What do you think?”
Frances looked around. “I think there’s a few more, maybe laying in ditches we can’t see. I think the ones we can see are distractions. But we’ll see what he has to say. Maybe they’re just careful, like us.”
“We ain’t careful if we stick around.”
“We need food.”
“And what are you thinking of trading for it?”
He met my stare. “Guns. We got empty guns they probably have bullets for. Even if they don’t, a man will miss a meal or two for another gun.”
“Hello!” the man called, nearing. His beard grew to the left as if blown by a wind we couldn’t feel. His shirt was open, his scrawny chest the canvas for a large drawn cross. Jesus sagged in tattooed crucifixion and behind him rose the purple form of a demon, wings open to full span creating a bruised background for Christ’s death.
“Not a word, little heart,” Frances warned.
From where I stood I saw her mime a lip-zipping gesture. She smiled at me. I’ll always remember that.
“I’ll talk to him, keep him away from you and the girl.”
I broke open my weapon and approached with it hooked over one arm. I could snap it closed quick enough if I had to. It was a gesture, that was all.
The tattooed man responded by holstering his.
“Dangerous road to be travelling in twos,” the man said, “Unless you’re seeking some Noah I know a nothing about.” He laughed, though he’d clearly thought it up on his walk over.
“It is,” I said. I gestured to my waist pocket and he nodded, making a lowering motion with one hand which I hoped was a signal to the others not to panic. I reached in and showed him what I had.
“Impressive,” he said. “You must walk the righteous path.”
“I do.”
I returned the talons to my pocket.
“So do we,” he said. “Got one of the bitches back there a way. She’d sniffed us out, found our haven.”
“Too bad.”
“Inevitable. What do you want, you want shelter?”
“Food, if you have spare.”
“No such thing, but we can spare some of what we have. What you got to spare us?”
I had something better than guns.
S
The food he traded took me into Texas and there I hooked up with some people heading east. I’ll go at least as far as Mississippi with them, depending how things go. They have paper and pens and keep leaving messages for others along the way, telling people where they’re going. I started writing this down so others might learn the truth when they got there, only I’m not sure what truth it is I want to tell. That some demons are men, there’s that, though I doubt you’ll believe me. I never seen one of those things that weren’t a bitch with wings, and I’ve seen a few now. Not all women are demons, but some are. I should admit that.
The men at that gas station thought so. They took me to the cellar and showed me.
“You have to whip them,” the man with the tattoo explained. “It stops the wings from growing.”
The women were tied face down over boards, their backs laced with red lines that ran in ribbons. He showed me what they’d done to stop demons being born, and then he showed me where the food was, piled high in tin towers. I began stuffing my pack with it, not sure how long I’d have before Frances tried something.
“They’ll find us again,” the bearded man said. “Sniff us out. When you take their chicks, the mothers come hunting. But people need to learn, and we provide the opportunity here. We can’t stop in our work.”
No, I didn’t think he could. And all the time there were groups like this, the person who Cassie called Charlotte would be in danger. It was only a matter of time before Frances saw me as a means to feed and clothe his adopted daughter, and who knew what he’d do to her when she got older.
“He’s going to be trouble, isn’t he?” the man with me said.
“If you give him time to be.”
He hadn’t believed me at first, this man, when I told him Frances was my prisoner. “He looks a little big for you to manage,” he’d said, “and h
e looks armed.”
“He is. But so am I and I walk behind.”
“And he carries his demon on his back,” the man added, liking the symbolism.
“You don’t need to take it,” the man said now as I forced my bag closed and hefted it over my shoulder. “You could stay.”
They’d had enough from me already.
“No. Thanks. I need to keep moving.”
“Alright.”
He walked me outside where Frances stood patient, trusting and careful.
“Want to say anything?” the man asked me.
“No.”
“Forgive him, Lord,” said the man. He signalled and Frances fell, for a moment looking as if the man’s quick point had thrown him down. Then came the crack of the roof man’s rifle.
Cassie called for Frances from where she lay under him. The men around me heard a girl’s voice calling a man a girl’s name. If she later called me Charlotte they’d dismiss it as something the same.
“You want to stay for her cleansing at least?”
I shook my head, more to clear it of its images than as answer.
“Alright,” said the man, and clasped my hand.
I made sure my grip was hard and firm, then walked away.
S
There are demons everywhere. That’s what I’ve seen. That’s what the clarity of post-2020 vision shows me. You don’t need a harness to carry them, either. They come at night, tormenting my darkest hours and screaming when I try to sleep. I have a strip of wire for when they come and I whip my back to keep the wings away, lashing at my skin, scouring my flesh until they’re satisfied by the pain. They come and they scream and they know me for what I am, and they know it’s not just a woman.
Night Fishing
Terrence leaned the throttle forward and the Siren Cisco lurched over a swell, coming down in the trough with a bump that did little to shake the feeling of dread that had settled like bilge in his heart. He knew what he would find today and there’d be no setting his nets until he’d hauled it aboard.
The moon was full; he’d see it easily enough. He’d see it as clearly as he could see the bridge spanning the bay ahead, though perhaps that wouldn’t be for long; a low fog was coming in. It always did on nights like these.
Glancing behind, he saw that Laura had joined him at last. She was always the first and she always came in at the stern. Stern Laura, with the sky in her eyes and seaweed in her hair. She was staring past him and he wondered, as he always did, if she stared at the bridge or into the darkness of the waves that had failed to claim her.
S
Three hours earlier, Terrence had been pushing his shopping cart down one aisle and up another, filling it with his usual fare. An easy catch: crackers, gherkins, spaghetti in tomato sauce, cheese, beer. Some meat, maybe. Never fish.
“Tertle,” came a voice from behind, then—clisch!—her cart had rammed into his.
“Hey, Jill.”
Jill’s cart was filled with various soon-to-expire goods. “How’s you?”
“Oh, you know,” said Terrence, “slick as an oil spill—”
“—and twice as dark.”
They smiled awkwardly at each other for a moment, remembering the poem.
“The tiramisu’s good for another day,” Jill said eventually, reaching into her cart. “You ever had tiramisu?”
Terrence shook his head. He may have been the wild man of Castro, but Bobby was the adventurous one when it came to food. Jill took out the dessert. “You’ll like it,” she said, and put it in his cart. She eyed the rest of his shopping. “Wanna come over for dinner tonight? Suzie misses you. Way she carries on, sometimes I wonder if she’s really gay.”
Terrence smiled.
“Well? Come on, we haven’t seen you in ages.”
He wasn’t able to answer; the sea had found its way in. It surged ankle-deep from the top of the aisle down to the checkout and washed up in a sudden wave that splashed the tills. The operators swiped grocery after grocery—bleep! bleep!—and the water receded without them knowing it was there, leaving lines of sand and pebbles in its wake. A crab scuttled beneath the shelves of cereal.
“You know, most men would love a home-cooked dinner with two women all to themselves, but if it’s the company,” —her voice became cautious— “then there’s this guy I know . . .”
Terrence closed his eyes but he could still smell the brine of the wet floor and somewhere he could hear a fish as it flopped for breath. Or maybe it was his own struggle to breathe as he tried to wake up. Jill’s voice had faded entirely. He knew, if he were to open his eyes, he’d find she was gone. The aisle would be empty. Or Laura would be there instead.
“This is a customer announcement,” the speakers began. The voice bubbled and choked as if the throat was filling with water. “Terrence Shelby to the Golden Gate Bridge. That’s Terrence Shelby to the Golden Gate Bridge.”
He opened his eyes. Laura stood broken and limp at the foot of his bed, pointing.
“What time is it?” Terrence asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He knew she couldn’t answer.
Laura spoke a dribble of ocean, all she ever spoke, and went from the room on legs that folded too much, twisting at the hips as if her spine were made of shingle.
Terrence followed her out, the carpet squelching beneath his feet whenever he found the wet prints she’d left behind.
S
He eased off the speed when he caught sight of something pale bobbing port-side. His seemed the only boat out this late at night, but it wouldn’t be long before others were leaving the bay to trawl for the day’s specials. His catch of the day would be of a different sort, though.
The water rose and fell slowly, a welcome relief to the steepness of the city streets. “You’re a city fish,” Bobby had said once, “but you wish it was on the water instead of next to it.” He’d been right about that, as he’d been right about so many things. They’d been on Telegraph Hill, watching the fishermen come and go. The “city fish” line, and much of the view they were admiring, found its way into Bobby’s “Night Fishing.” Sometimes Terrence still went to the hill and watched the ferry come in and he’d think of Bobby, entering the city in the same way as his hero, Thom Gunn. Bobby, who would wonder at a snail’s fury and peer at the world through the keyholes of hotel rooms. But as good a view as the hill offered, Terrence preferred to be on the bay itself. His favourite days were when the sea was an open flatness spoiled only by the churning engines of other boats.
The pale bobbing thing in the water was nothing.
Nothing, the wanton name that nightly I rehearse till led away to a dark sleep.
He wasn’t sure he remembered it right—was it supposed to be present tense? He didn’t read poetry much anymore, Gunn or anyone else. He didn’t want the patterns they promised; he was already living in a rhythm he didn’t like.
In the water, the pale pages of an open city map rose and fell. Rose and fell.
“You lost?” Terrence had asked, more right than he knew. And Bobby, fresh from the ferry, had smiled and said, “Not anymore.” His poise had hooked Terrence but the smile brought him up out of the water, gasping for air. Bobby was looking for Castro on a map that forced his arms to full length. Terrence had pointed it out gladly, said he went there a lot himself. Testing the waters.
Closer, Terrence saw it wasn’t a map at all in the water but the open spread of a newspaper page that sank away with his memory. Thoughts of Bobby had fooled him, forced a reminiscence that was still as sharp as a fishhook.
Something else in the water caught his eye. It was another nothing: a sea-filled plastic bag, fat as a jellyfish. He took down a boathook to scoop it aboard; it wouldn’t do to keep seeing it, wasting time wondering who it could be.
The bag came up easily,
dripping.
A bloated pink face came right up after it.
Terrence fumbled the boathook as he stumbled backwards. He managed to juggle it back into his grasp as the rest of the body surfaced, the skin puckered and fish-nibbled. He stared, getting his breath back, merely startled, then calmly hooked the folds of an “I heart San Francisco” shirt and pulled the body closer.
“Hello Matthew.”
He wasn’t startled when the eyes opened and the man smiled the frothy smile of the drowned. Blood-tinged bubbles spilled from his lips in a careless vomit of foam, just as they had the first time Terrence found him.
“You coming aboard too?” Terrence asked, knowing the answer.
Instead of bumping against the boat’s hull, the man passed through, disappearing into the vessel.
By the time Terrence had thrown out the tattered plastic bag, the drowned man was standing with Laura. His chin rested on his chest at an angle that had him forever looking down, but his waist had folded backwards on impact with the water, straightening his gaze a little. Matthew was an engineering student, stressed with his studies and finances and the certainty that he’d fail.
“How many more are coming?”
But of course, they didn’t answer him.
S
“Come on,” Terrence said, “I can take it.”
Terrence and Bobby were in bed, naked, eating Japanese food from boxes and talking about why Bobby’s family disapproved of his recent life choice.
Bobby tangled some squid with noodles and gave the reasons. “Your age, your colour, and your ‘inclination’.”