LUMP

by Claire L. Fishback

  Dr. Delaware leaned closer, leered at me and said, “Who cares?” He backed away abruptly. “Who cares if there is life elsewhere? We obviously cannot communicate with them!” He threw something against the five-year-old’s door, and they all began to scream again.

  “Go check on the thirteen-year-old,” I said.

  DR. DELAWARE LAUGHED as the assistant disappeared into the five-year-old room. He sauntered down the hall toward the room with the thirteen-year-old. It was obviously a female specimen. She had long dark-blue hair that she enjoyed brushing as she sat in her storage room.

  Dr. Delaware entered her room and looked at her. He rubbed his hands together and gave her a wicked grin. The thirteen-year-old turned toward him and her mouth twitched. Dr. Delaware took a step forward.

  “Useless creatures, can’t even talk,” he said out loud. The thirteen-year-old smiled at him. As he neared her, she opened her mouth. “What are you doing?” Dr. Delaware asked her.

  Her mouth opened further, as if she was going to answer him, but instead, a serpent shot out, grabbed Dr. Delaware around the middle, bent him in two, swallowed him whole and disappeared back into her mouth. All the while, she combed her long hair. She began to hum.

  WHEN I ENTERED THE thirteen-year-old’s room, she was humming and combing her hair.

  “Did you have a good lunch?” I asked her. She looked at me and nodded emphatically.

  A Call from Godzilla

  “THIS IS NOT MY PHONE,” Bill said, his brow furrowed. “Someone stole my phone and switched it with this one, look,” he handed his phone to his girlfriend, the busty and blonde Lucille.

  “Who the hell is Francine?” She asked, her lips turning down into a pout.

  “I don’t know. This isn’t my phone.”

  Lucille handed the phone back to Bill and he continued to scroll through the numbers.

  Suddenly, it rang. The assigned ring tone for a caller called “Godzilla” was the theme from Friends.

  Bill pressed the answer button. “Hello?” he asked, brow still furrowed.

  Lucille pulled a nail file from her purse and started vigorously filing her middle finger.

  The voice on the phone was deep and mechanical.

  “Go to the Eight of Clubs. There you will meet a man called Leibniz, he has the secret. You will receive a phone call from Restricted Number. Give them the secret and you will live. Deny them the secret, and you and your busty little girlfriend will die.”

  “Eight of Clubs the bar or the pawn shop?” Bill asked. The phone went dead. “Hello? Hello?”

  “Who was that?” Lucille asked.

  “Godzilla,” Bill said. “We have to go.”

  Bill hoped on his Harley, Lucille in the sidecar, and drove first to the pawn shop, though something told him this Leibniz guy would be at the bar. He went inside, instructing Lucille to stay by the bike, and asked for Leibniz.

  The pawn shop owner shrugged. “Ain’t no Leibniz here,” he said. “Try the bar.”

  Bill entered the bar and looked around. A haze of smoke drifted above eye level, fighting the fans that spun lackadaisically on the yellowed ceiling. An obese gentleman at the bar in a tight-fitting brown, pinstripe suit sucked on a cigar. He flipped a couple bills out of his money clip and put them on the counter.

  “Thanks, Leibniz!” he called, waving across the bar. Bill looked to where he was waving but didn’t see anyone. He approached the bar.

  “Where can I find Leibniz?” he asked.

  “Who wants to know?” The bartender asked, uninterested while he wiped the counter. He was a bulky man with rippling biceps in a black muscle shirt.

  “I do,” Bill said. “Bill Billsly,” he said.

  “Oh, hey!” The bartender said, eyes brightening. He stopped wiping the bar. “Bill Billsly is here!” He yelled over Bill’s head. Bill turned to look. When he turned back around, the bartender had his arms crossed. “Who the hell cares who Bill Billsly is?” He said. “Get outta my bar.”

  Lucille leaned on the counter and popped her gum. “Hi,” she said with a bright, toothy smile.

  Bartender leaned on the counter on one elbow. “Heyhowareya,” he said, like it was one word.

  “Fine,” she said with a sassy flip of her hair. “Where’s Leibniz,” she asked. Bartender’s eye balls would have fallen into her cleavage if they hadn’t been lodged securely in their sockets.

  “In the back corner,” he said, visibly drooling.

  Bill rolled his eyes, grabbed Lucille’s wrist and dragged her to the back corner.

  On the table was a name card that read, Leibniz.

  “Sit down.” A man, who was obscured completely by a newspaper, said. “You want the secret?”

  “Yes.” Bill slid into the booth. Leibniz lowered the newspaper.

  “Here it is, listen and listen closely.” He could have been related to Woody Allen. He was old, with gray hair and a large nose with big, dark-rimmed glasses perched on top. His accent was from New York. “One cup of sugar, two teaspoons of lemon juice, a shot of Crown, and a drop, just a drop you hear, of pure vanilla extract. It has to be pure or else it won’t work.” He raised the paper back in front of him.

  “Wait, can you say it again? I need to write this down,” Bill said. He grabbed a napkin.

  “Nope, that’s all you get,” Leibniz said.

  Lucille shrugged. “I remember it,” she said. She pulled a little pink notebook from her little pink purse and wrote the secret in pink ink with a little pink pen.

  “Thank you, Leibniz.” Bill said.

  When they left the bar, the cell phone rang with the familiar TV show theme. It was Godzilla.

  “Did you get the secret?”

  “Yes,” Bill answered.

  “Good,” Godzilla replied. “Restricted Number will be calling you shortly.”

  No sooner had Bill hung up with Godzilla, the phone rang again with Restricted Number’s theme—Jaws.

  “Give me the secret,” Restricted Number said before Bill had the chance to say Hello. His voice was deep and gruff, as if he just woke up with a sore throat.

  He looked at Lucille who handed him the paper she had written the secret on. He relayed the message.

  “What?” Restricted Number said.

  Bill repeated the secret.

  “That can’t be right,” Restricted Number said. “That’s not a combination, that’s a recipe!”

  Before Bill and Lucille could do anything, they were surrounded by a group of teenagers in white shirts. Each held a different type of weapon. Bill wondered if they got to choose their weapons when they joined up with whatever agency it was that they belonged to.

  A girl with a backwards ball cap on swung a chain around in a circle. “Let’s get ‘em boys.”

  Back at the Eight of Clubs, Leibniz stood up and looked at his name card. “Oh darn, they spelled my name wrong, again!” He crossed out the z and added a ck to the end. “No wonder those kids thanked me by the wrong name, sheesh!” He tucked the paper under his arm and left the bar.

  Mycelia

  MYCELIANS LOVE PRUNES and live under beds, that’s what the book Mycelian Facts and Falsehoods claimed. I placed a plate of prunes on the floor and waited. I was old—eighty-eight—to believe in monsters under the bed, and that’s probably the reason my family put me in here. ‘Here’ is the claustrophobic room in Mountain View, a hospital for the elderly.

  The reason I wanted to catch a Mycelian was because they could transport me to a better place. The book said that, too.

  I heard three coins drop into the vending machine outside, and a can clatter into the bin. I scrambled to my window to see what they got. As the person passed, I strained to look, but I couldn’t see.

  “What did you get?” I yelled. “What did you get, let me see!”

  A middle-aged man turned, held up a can of cola, and kept walking.

  “Cola . . .” I said. I flipped through the book, full of brightly-colored pictures of the Mycelian and Mycelia,
to see if they liked cola. It didn’t say whether they did or not.

  When I looked at the plate, the prunes were gone.

  DR. CARTHIAN FINISHED applying her red lipstick, placed the tube back in her purse and pulled the zipper shut. She looked up at me.

  “Mycelians?” She said. “What are Mycelians?”

  I didn’t like her. She showed no compassion, no understanding. I sat in a hard, plastic chair. This was my weekly therapy session.

  “They live under my bed,” I said quietly, looking at my hands in a lap that had become frail over the past months.

  “Where did you hear about them?” She jotted notes on a yellow pad.

  “In a book,” I said.

  “What book?” She asked.

  I met her eyes, a piercing, icy blue. I told her the title of my beloved book.

  “The children’s book?” She said with a scowl. She rolled her eyes and continued writing.

  When we were finished, I heard her say to someone, “remove the books from room 19.”

  When I got back to my room, the book was gone. I sat on my bed and cried.

  A moment later, there was a tug on my sleeve. I looked down into the eye of a female Mycelian! I knew she was female because of her three long eyelashes on her one large, blue, saucer-like eye. She still held my sleeve in her long fingers. Her little pink lips formed a smile as she handed me the book. She gripped my hand and pulled at it. I got up from the bed.

  The Mycelian stood to my knee and wore a mushroom-shaped hat over her long, golden hair that trailed down her back, nearly to the floor. Her cat-like tail lashed as she pointed underneath the bed.

  “Am I to go under there?” I asked.

  She nodded, fluttering her dragonfly wings. She swept a hand over her eye, indicating that I was to close my own.

  I lay on my back and slid under the bed, eyes closed. When I opened them, I was in a mystical land, full of color, like the pictures of the book. Rolling green hills dappled with colorful flowers, sparkling ponds full of rainbow-colored fish, a blue sky with white, cotton candy clouds. Mycelians danced and ran around giggling. I saw people I hadn’t seen in years, thought to be dead; friends from my past.

  We joined hands and danced in a circle, reveling in the greatness of Mycelia!

  THE NURSE PAUSED IN the doorway. She turned and rushed down the hall to Dr. Carthian’s office.

  “The tenant of room 19 is dead,” she told him.

  The Auction

  THE AUCTION HOUSE WAS a tall structure with missing shingles, drooping shutters, and an all-around creepy visage. It was in dire need of paint and was in a sad state of disrepair. It was here where the Private Auction was held by invitation only.

  The Auctioneer was a tall man with sallow skin and deep-set eyes. He had long fingers that he waved around when he spoke in his low voice.

  “Lot number 327,” he said, gesturing to the table. A canvas tarp covered the table. The Auctioneer’s assistant, a squat fellow with a toad-like face, whipped the tarp off the table with a flourish. “The left arm of Isabella Rothberger,”

  The arm lay among a beautiful display of flowers. It was dressed in a lacy white sleeve and had a beautiful two-carat diamond ring on the ring finger.

  “Bidding will start at one-hundred dollars,” The Auctioneer said.

  After Isabella Rothberger’s arm was sold to a lady in a yellow hat for $25,000, the next lot was brought out.

  “Lot number 328,” The Auctioneer said.

  When the assistant pulled the canvas tarp off lot 328, there was a quiet gasp in the audience.

  “Mr. Hinkelheim’s head.”

  A woman in the front row fainted. Her husband caught her and fanned her face with his wooden paddle.

  “Five hundred dollars to the man fanning the lady,” The Auctioneer said.

  The man looked up, eyes wide. “No, sir, you see I’m merely fanning her, I’m not bidding! Can’t you see she’s passed out?” The man shouted.

  “Sir you already bid, no need to bid again,” The Auctioneer said.

  “Five hundred, do I see five fifty?” The Auctioneer said. “Five hundred going once, going twice,” The Auctioneer looked around the room one more time before bringing his mallet down on the podium. “Sold to the man fanning the lady for $500.”

  The man stopped fanning his wife and looked up at The Auctioneer and then at the table where Mr. Hinkelheim’s head sat. The eyes were closed, and the face looked serene.

  “I don’t want that silly head,” the man said. “Certainly not for five hundred dollars!”

  “Sir, you bid, you won, you pay,” The Auctioneer said with a sneer. He looked up at the audience. “Moving right along to lot number 329,” the tarp was pulled from the table. “Mr. Hinkelheim’s mistress, Lady Florington,”

  Lady Florington lay on the table on her back in a lovely rose-colored dress. There was a knife jutting from her abdomen, and a circle of red around the knife.

  “The bidding will start at $10,000,” The Auctioneer said.

  Lady Florington was sold for $30,000.

  There were several macabre lots to follow. Finally, lot number 342 was brought out; Isabella Rothberger, intact with the exception of her left arm.

  “Lot number 342, Isabella Rothberger,” The Auctioneer said. Isabella Rothberger looked altogether peaceful in her white dress with lacy sleeves. She was wearing a veil that whoever set up the lots had placed gently over her face.

  As it goes, according to the article published in the newspaper if one had read the paper a few days before the auction, Isabella Rothberger was engaged to Mr. Hinkelheim. On the day of their wedding, she was unfortunate enough to open the door to Lady Florington, Mr. Hinkelheim’s mistress. Florington cut off Rothberger’s left arm in order to get the ring that she believed belonged to her. Rothberger, in retaliation, stabbed Florington in the stomach with the knife in the dressing room. She then hunted down Mr. Hinkelheim. The only part of Mr. Hinckelheim that was found was his head. Rothberger bled to death.

  “The next auction will be held next Saturday,” The Auctioneer said. “After the man fanning the lady kills myself and my assistant. Does anyone wish to be an auctioneer?”

  The Door

  I WISH I’D NEVER GONE through that door. It was frightening to look at. The long stairway ended with the door, and over the years the wood around the door had turned gray and old. It had aged much faster than it should have, given that it was never exposed to the outside elements. The gray spread partway down the staircase. The stairs became warped.

  Sometimes it sounded like there were a dozen people up there stomping around. Other times it sounded like a being with clawed feet was running back and forth. Scratching sounds, moaning, crying, shrieking. No one knew what was behind that door because if anyone came back, they were shells of their former selves.

  It was an old house set in the center of a swamp surrounded by willow trees that swayed and moaned in a breeze that always flowed through. I always felt trapped there, like I would suffocate.

  One night, I found myself halfway up the stairs before I woke from a trance. I had my right foot poised on the first of the warped gray steps. Some force drew me forward.

  When I stood on the landing in front of the door, I reached out a hand and pressed it against the rough, grayed wood. It was warm. I touched the knob gently at first, in case it was hot. It was quite cool. I gripped it and turned slowly.

  All light was enveloped by the darkness within. I stepped inside, slightly aware of the door closing gently behind me. There wasn’t a shred of light, not even from under the door. I saw lights flashing before my eyes, and I felt hope, until I realized it was because I couldn’t breathe. I closed my eyes and was dully aware of striking my head on the floor.

  When I woke up, I was in a land full of writhing creatures that were mostly mist-like beings. There was a great winding pathway down a hill. At the bottom was a throne and on the throne was a gargoyle, or perhaps a demon. She was chained to th
e throne by a large shackle around her neck. Her giant wings formed the ceiling of this cavern. When she moved, bits of stone fell from where her wings scraped the walls.

  She moaned, and I was filled with sadness. Who was this demon who had such a commanding presence, yet full of such sorrow?

  I wandered down the winding path and stood before her. Her figure, and the throne she was imprisoned on, stood at least fifty feet above me. She looked at me with cat eyes that were the same gray as her pallid skin.

  “What ails you fair demon?” I asked, venturing a guess as to what she was.

  “I am kept here, captive to my own duty,” she said.

  “What is your duty?” I asked her.

  “To weigh the souls of the dead,” she said. She closed her eyes and a tear slithered down her cheek. “I was given this duty, and though it is a duty of great importance, here I sit, chained to my throne, a slave to the souls.”

  “Is there nothing you can do to get out of this duty?” I asked her.

  “I am to remain in this duty for eternity,” she said. “My soul was weighed, and I became this monstrosity before you,” she shifted in her chair. “I was once a beautiful woman, a princess. I was killed on the eve of my wedding, by poison,” she wiped a tear from her cheek. “I became this, and my love, my prince, he walks the land looking for me, not knowing that I am right here, for I do not appear to be his princess.”

  “That’s so terrible,” I said. And truly it was. “I saw him,” I said, even though I really hadn’t. “If I brought him here, and told him, or made him believe you are the princess, will that do anything?”

  My heart was racked with sorrow when she sighed again. “He will not believe that I am his fair princess. He will think of me only as a monster. He will not believe that it is me.”