The Skunge

by Barr, Jeff

  The fat woman screamed like a fire-engine as she ran past, her face pale with shock except for two fire-spots of panic high on her doughy cheeks. Jynx turned to watch as she disappeared into the parking lot, and Sugar ran for the old couple. Another person, a cadaverous blond woman, rushed out, and more behind her. People began to stream out, some screaming, some grim-faced and concentrating on putting as much space between themselves and the hospital as possible. A hefty bearded man bulled out carrying a shrieking toddler under each arm, his wife close behind, shouting incoherently. A younger girl, dressed in a black hoodie featuring the ghostly skull logo of a punk band, stopped to try and help the old man. She grabbed his cane and moved to hand it to him when a Mexican guy in green scrubs came blasting out of the doors and knocked her down as well. The stream became a flood.

  "What's happening?" Sugar shouted.

  A woman with beauty-pageant good looks, leading a child by the hand, stopped next to them to catch her breath. The kid was of indeterminate age, bald, with hollow black-circled eyes. Her neon pink t-shirt read TEAM SUSIE - KICK CANCER'S ASS! Her thin arms trailed plastic tubes.

  "What the hell is going on in there?" Sugar asked.

  "Zombies. Swamp Thing zombies," the kid's said. Her eyes, dark as drops of oil, drew in the light.

  The young woman frowned up at the hospital. "Susie, don't make up stuff." She shivered. "I'm not sure what happened. Maybe a shooting? I heard gunshots from somewhere. And we saw a guy in a costume or something, chasing people. It looked like he was covered in worms." She bent at the waist, hands on her knees, struggling to catch her breath. "It was like a nightmare."

  Sugar wondered if the pretty woman meant the night, the hospital, or only a world where cancer reigned like a dragon, picking and choosing its victims from anyone.

  The little girl, Susie, clutched at Sugar's arm with surprising strength. "Don't go inside. Please."

  Sugar put her warm hand over the little girl's cold fingers. "We won't. Can you tell me what—"

  The crackle of gunfire startled them. A cadre of security guards ran through the emergency room, shouting into walkie-talkies. From far away, the angelic wail of sirens rose into the night.

  The woman touched Jynx's arm. "Come with us. Whatever is in there…you don't want to be here when it gets out."

  "Do you hear something?" Jynx said. Her voice trembled. "Like wind, or whispering, something like that?"

  Sugar opened her mouth to say no, and realized she could hear something. Like the crash of an ocean miles away, or the murmur of water in an underground cavern where no light entered and sound echoed from unexpected angles. The tiny bones of her ears vibrated in sympathy with the sound. "I can hear it. I can feel it."

  The woman dragged the child away. Susie turned back once, offering a mute, apologetic wave, and then they were lost into the night.

  An indistinct figure slumped around the corner of the building. Then from the other corner, another. And another. Sugar froze, watching their approach, watching the way their bodies moved, covered in squirming things and reaching, slithering, growths.

  "Mmm, yes. I can feel it too," Jynx said. She turned to Sugar, eyes shining. "We can join them, you know. Let's run with them."

  Sugar looked at the shapes moving toward them. "I don't think we want to do that, baby. I think we want to get out of here. Now."

  "Why? They're like us. Can't you feel it?"

  Sugar could feel it, like a cold tickle at the base of her skull. The worst part was, she wanted to run with them. Wanted to be with them.

  Sugar grabbed Jynx by the arm, pulling her away from the hospital.

  Christian emerged from the doors, looking in the direction that Sugar had gone. He dragged himself down the front sidewalk, staggering after her. The other Skungers followed.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Sugar's building was quiet and mostly dark. The elevator hummed to itself as Jynx shivered, her fingers clutching Sugar's arm. Her eyes were blank and staring. Sugar saw faces like hers on the news all the time; a witness to a disaster, a mind driven blank by something so outside of experience it blew their circuits. She wondered if her own face looked the same.

  Sugar pondered their situation. Two ratty, dirty ex-porn actresses infected with a disease that turned people into psychopaths…after, of course, covering your skin and filling your body with sentient tentacles. From here, they'd have to climb several steps just to make it to hopeless. If she'd had a fortune cookie, she could have cracked it open and found an empty fortune on a black sheet of paper.

  "He's really gone, isn't he?" Jynx asked. Nothing remained of Palmetto but his cigarette butts and a lingering aroma of Old Spice and whiskey.

  "He's gone."

  "You won't ever leave me, will you Sugar?"

  "No. You're my sister now."

  Jynx sprawled on Sugar's couch while Sugar hunted through her kitchen, scarfing down whatever she could find. She felt a draft and wandered out into the living room, licking her fingers clean. The itching had subsided somewhat, like it had been frightened back under the surface by their visit to the hospital.

  Jynx stood on the balcony, looking out over the LA skyline. It was lit up like a fire, and the lights touched her face like a lover.

  "I always thought I'd go to film school and make movies. Movies about growing up in the beach cities, all those crazy kids I grew up with. Cookie, this girl I knew killed her own father because he molested her. She was totally fearless, except she was scared of bees. She was allergic to them, one sting and her throat would swell closed and if she didn't get a shot right then, she would die. It was hereditary, passed down from her dad. She saved up every penny she could until she had enough to buy a beekeeper's suit. We all laughed, crazy little Cookie, so scared of bees she spent good money on that instead of beer and weed. She waited 'til her dad was good and drunk one night; she tied him up, and took the jar full of pissed off bees she'd caught and let them sting that fucker to death. She turned to Sugar. "She would have made a good movie. But what about my life? I wanted to make a good movie, too. But now I'm going to die at twenty in some shit-hole apartment in Highland."

  "Hey now, that's my shit-hole apartment you're talking about," Sugar mock-growled. But that cold tickle remained in her head, the one from the hospital. Sirens howled, wafting in through the balcony doors like a benediction. "Anyway, you're not dying today."

  "I can still hear the calling."

  "Oh honey. I'm sorry." She took Jynx's hand in hers. They were cold and smooth as glass. "We're going to get through it. Do you hear me?"

  Jynx sniffled and stared out at the city. "Yeah. I hear you." Her eyes were beautiful in the artificial light of the city. "Thank you, Sugar. For everything."

  "Of course. Sisters, right? Who else would I let borrow my underwear?"

  A ghost of a smile touched Jynx's lips. "Would you get me a glass of water? I want to stay out here another minute."

  There was something so heart-breaking and child-like in her voice, her eyes full of the LA night, Sugar felt her throat clench with sudden tears. She squeezed Jynx's shoulder and returned to the kitchen. She wanted to make this right. Make it all go away. They would sell their story, and make a bundle of money, and share a house in the California woods, and they would be happy.

  She found lemonade in the fridge, some stale but edible cookies, and a waxed cylinder of cheerily fluorescent orange crackers. The Skunge buzzed and twisted inside her, sending random flashes of pain, of itching, of fleeting pleasure up her arms and down her legs. Her mind returned to the knife, to the vinegar and salt. She was done with that, but what else was there?

  She walked out of the kitchen and dropped the tray. Jynx stood on the balcony railing. She had stripped off her clothes. Her thin T-shirt had caught one of the decorative wrought-iron spikes, and it flapped like a flag in the fitful breeze. Around her tattoos, her skin gleamed under the bone-colored light of the moon. Sugar could just make out the first delicate tracings of the
Skunge as it regrew inside her flesh.

  "Jynx?" Sugar stepped slowly, carefully, her voice pitched low. "Get down off there. Please."

  Jynx shook her head. A gust of wind toyed with her hair, and for a moment, Sugar pictured her in the pages of some teen magazine, alongside an article about the best beach reads for summer, or how to watch your carb intake. Then she pictured her covered in ropes of black green and red vines, the Skunge moving and twisting around her, poking out of her skin, twisting through her fingers, stitching her arms to her sides. Jynx was lost, she knew that; but she was lost as well. "You need to see something, Sugar. Down on the street. Come and see."

  "OK, honey. Then we can talk about this, right?" Sugar stepped to the railing and peered down. Several Skungers stood below, clustered on the sidewalk in front of the doors. As Sugar watched, the Skungers, moving as one, looked up at her.

  "They're here for you, Sugar."

  "Why?" Sugar crept closer, trying to keep Jynx talking, keep her tethered to the world. "What do they want from me?" Six feet and she would be close enough to grab Jynx's arm.

  Jynx smiled obscurely at nothing. "What does anyone want? To eat you up. To own you, body and soul. I can feel it too. It's the Skunge, reaching out to you. For you. I don't know why you're special. It's better to be special than to be nothing at all." Her skin was so white, her smile so empty and cold.

  Jynx stepped off the railing, and she was gone. Sugar's scream echoed over the valley, and hid the sound of Jynx hitting the pavement.

  Part 2

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Leaving LA was a blur. After Jynx, she had called 911, broken down screaming when there was no answer, and then she ran. The feeling of alien static, filled with unknown voices, was stronger than ever. Part of her exorbitant rent included covered parking, thankfully in the back of the building. She got her car without incident, jumping at shadows the entire time. She sped off into the night, not looking back, willing the noise in her head to go away. Finally, it receded like a bad radio signal. The fear of its return bounced around her mind like a rubber bullet all the way to Northern California.

  The morning dawned sullen and pale. She had slept in a dingy motel just outside of Fortuna, and the room smelled like vinegar, old sweat, and loneliness. The place had bedbugs— a tiny drift of dead ones lay around her when she awoke. She sat on the bed and smoked, her mind turning restlessly over the events in LA. Jynx. Dr. Palmetto. All of it traced back to the movie shoot in the valley—Christian from Kansas, with his strange, cold eyes. The more she thought about it, the worse she itched. She dug her fingernails into her flesh, scratching until she saw blood.

  She peered into the bathroom mirror, the diseased light of the flyspecked lightbulb shining full bright on her face, and saw nothing in her flesh. But under her nails, specks of black filth. She thought about the past and the creeping inevitably of its return. She cried in the shower, a short hard rain of tears for Jynx, who had wanted so badly to be special that she couldn't see that she already was.

  She drove up Dennis Maas's driveway the next evening. As the house pulled into view, an old feeling crept back into her belly. Not pleasure or pain, but a sensation like a ball of ice in her stomach. She had lived with that sensation for many years, and it had taken her almost ten years to forget. When she had last left Maas' house, she thought she would never be back. But here she was. For a moment, she thought about turning around and heading anywhere else. What could she find out there? She drummed her fingers on the wheel.

  She leaned on the gate buzzer. A point of red light winked open high up on the gate, and she scowled at the impersonal eye of the driveway cam. It buzzed as it panned the car. She gave it the finger.

  "Spare me the bullshit and let me in, please." She lit a cigarette, then tossed it after one puff, grimacing at the bitter, awful taste.

  The gate buzzed and swung open in ponderous silence. The house was lit up, every light blazing, a trio of luxury cars and SUVs parked in the long driveway like slumbering exotic beasts. She parked behind a Cadillac, got out and stretched luxuriously. The near-dark hummed with life, the buzz of insects like a fog.

  A compact, thick-set man with bleak eyes answered the door. His arms were covered in splashes of tattooed color, contrasting with his pale skin and dark clothes.

  She smirked at him. "What are you supposed to be, the bouncer at a vampire convention?" She held his gaze, daring his eyes to drop to her crumpled sweat shorts, a size too small, and her tank-top, damp with sweat where it clung to her chest. His eyes stayed locked to hers, and even without the up-and-down examination, she felt the urge to cover up. He smiled, but it didn't reach the bleakness of his eyes.

  "Only on the weekends. Boss man is in the library—I don't suppose you need directions." He stood aside to let her pass. She wondered if she'd remembered to put on deodorant that morning.

  He kept pace with her, not offering to pick up her duffel bag she'd dropped at the door. She looked back at him. "I'm good, thanks. I'd love a drink though. A vodka and—"

  He smiled and interrupted. "There's a full bar in most of the rooms. I'm the bouncer, not the bartender, remember?" He gave her a crooked smile and veered off down a side hall. He sported a tattoo of a crown across the back of his neck.

  "What's your name? I can't just call you bouncer, and I may still want that drink later."

  He turned to walk backwards. "My name's Arneson." This time, the smile touched his eyes, if only for a second.

  She stopped before the library door. A mix of emotions swirled through her: shame, fear, anger, and unfocused guilt. She hadn't been in this room since she was a teenager. Her fingers traced the contours of the wood, like they had when she was a child, and it still felt smooth and shiny-slick. She knocked and the door opened.

  Her step-father hadn't changed much—hair too long, scruffy three-day growth of a beard, board shorts, flannel shirt. He was barefoot, as always. His permanent companion, a whiskey glass half-full of amber liquid, caught the mellow lamplight and spun it into gold. He looked more like a drug-addled ex-surfer than a drug lord or pornography king, but the Santa Colima County sheriff's department, and the FBI, said otherwise.

  "Sugar. This is a surprise." He sipped from his drink, looking her up and down.

  "Dennis."

  "You look good. Healthy, I mean." He made a vague hand-gesture. "You know."

  "Sure. How have you been?" She ignored the itching, which had started up again. It felt like insects crawling over her skin. She breathed in the smell of his cigars and the warm, boozy aura that always surrounded him. Long buried feelings climbed out of the soil of her psyche, itching like the Skunge. She crammed the sensation down with ruthless efficiency. She needed a place to stay, that was all. That was all.

  He ignored her question, as she knew he would. A Dennis Maas special, that. But God forbid you should ignore something he said. "So." He turned abruptly and plopped into an overstuffed leather chair, crossing his legs. "To what do I owe an appearance?" He selected a cigar and tapped it ruminatively on the humidor. "Let me guess: you'd like some money, and then nothing more to do with me for another five years."

  A flush rose on her face, and the itching heightened until it was almost unbearable. "No. No money. I'm doing pretty well for myself, now." She crushed a sudden urge to turn and leave, just run back the way she had come and take her chances on the road. But the past called to her, and the cold comfort of familiarity.

  "OK. So, what, then?

  Sugar hated this feeling, the awkward dance around the rotting framework of a shared past. She crossed her arms. "There's was some shit going on in LA and I needed to leave town for a bit. That's all, OK? I just need a place to stay."

  "Oh, so just a little vacation in the wild and woolly Northern California mountains? Just like your mother, when she showed up with you, ten years ago, begging for a crash pad."

  "And look how well that turned out."

  He pursed his lips, then exhaled and turned to f
ace his computer. The back of the chair cast a long shadow. "Fine." The barest hint of the Dutch accent he had worked so hard to be rid of crept into his words, as it did when he was angry or tired. "Stay as long as you like. Maybe I can find something for you to do to earn your keep."

  "Maybe," she said, and left the room. She was glad her voice didn't shake.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Arneson clubbed the fat man across the jaw with a pair of brass knuckles. A tooth, remarkably unblemished, flew out of Rubalcava's mouth and skittered across the floor like a thrown die. His lip burst, spraying blood across the yellowed linoleum. A single compact fluorescent bulb burned overheard, stapling the men's shadows to the floor. A smart phone sat on a portable stand, camera light glowing serenely as it captured the scene.

  "Holy shit!" Sonch cried. "Knocked his fuckin' tooth out. That's good." Sonch looked like Confucius; if Confucius were white, blond, perpetually stoned, and had a penchant for tight jeans, heavy metal t-shirts, and jail-house tattoos. He bent to pick up the tooth. The front of his jeans looked like he might have popped a boner. "How'd that feel, Rubalcava? Are you sure you don't want to tell us anything?"

  Mouth, nose, and two fingers broken, sans tooth, Rubalcava smiled like a contented Buddha.

  Arneson crouched to bring his eyes level with Rubalcava's, grimacing as his knees popped. "You look pretty jolly for a guy about to have his face smashed in. Tell you what—in about two minutes, I'm going to have my friend here," he nodded at Sonch, "go into the back and get his equipment. If he does, you're not walking out of here. Understand?"

  "I understand you're an asshole." The man spit pieces of broken lip as he spoke. One eye had turned blood red from ruptured blood vessels and his lips looked like strips of raw chicken. His nose had been broken so convincingly it looked like Picasso had designed it after a particularly bad acid trip. "Tell Maas to suck eggs."