by Morris, Jacy
"Shut up, Mort! I'm trying to sleep over here."
"Sorry," he hissed back, trying not to disturb anyone else.
Mort reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette, a hand-rolled smoke made with the cheapest tobacco one could buy. He twirled it in his brown fingers while he searched in the pocket of his jeans for a pack of matches. He found it, placed the cigarette in his mouth, struck a match and inhaled. It stung his throat and clung to the coarse hairs of his mustache, its rich smoke infusing the evening with an earthy quality.
He leaned against the concrete pillar, his head tilted back. The underside of the freeway was no attractive thing, just piles of metal and concrete all laced together, but it made him think. He wondered if it was time to move on. As the cars zoomed down the highway, he felt it in his bones, the call of freedom and the open road. He wasn't homeless because of a drug problem, a prison record, or mental illness. He was homeless because of his addiction to freedom. Sure, life was harder without a home address, but it was also purer, and when he was tired of one place, all he had to do was stick out his thumb and ride the highways to the next place. He didn't have to turn off the cable, change his bills over, or let anyone know. All he had to do was pack up the shit he wanted and hoof it down to the nearest trainyard. He snuffed out his cigarette amid thoughts of the future. It was decided; he would head east, maybe to Idaho or Montana while the weather was still good.
He went back to trying to pull his blanket from his cart. He tugged on the blanket, trying to make as little noise as possible, but it wouldn't come free. Without warning, a pair of clammy hands wrapped around his throat.
Chapter 3: Rudy
Rudy pulled the pin on the grenade. He calmly cooked it for three seconds and then threw it into the middle of the group. It exploded, sending showers of gore everywhere. He laughed into his mic as the players he had killed all shouted expletives at him, many containing racist terms or questioning his sexuality. One guy called him a "cocktoucher." That was a good one. He'd file that one away in his memory bank for the next time someone bested him at COD, or Call of Duty as the noobs liked to call it.
Of course, that probably wouldn't be for a while. He hadn't been handily defeated in quite some time. It wasn't that he was good. It was that he was patient. While most players ran around looking to get their heads blown off, Rudy always managed to find a place, set up traps to cover his ass, and then slowly pick people off. A thirty second lull in the action was no big deal to him, but to most players, it was enough to send them sprinting off into cyberspace to get their digital bits blown off.
People hated Rudy, both in real life and the video game world. They didn't hate him because he was good at video games or a genius in general... it was the fact that he knew it and didn't let people forget it. He had grown up without any real role models in foster homes for most of his life. As Rudy figured it, a kid facing the odds that he had faced had a right to brag a little bit. Yeah, Rudy may not have parents, but he could come up with an algebraic expression that would map out the probability of your future, right down to your employer and how many pounds you'd weigh. Ok... so maybe that was an exaggeration, but if you asked Rudy if he could do it, he would more than likely say yes. It was his confidence along with his ability that had landed him a full scholarship to Portland State University.
"Have fun sucking dicks, boys." Rudy triggered his weapon of mass destruction, laughed, and left the lobby. The competition had been too easy for him. He removed his three-hundred dollar Turtle Beach headphones, put his controller on his rickety coffee table, and walked into the small kitchenette of his apartment to grab a 20 oz. bottle of ass-kicking fuel... in this case, Mountain Dew: Code Red.
He slammed the door shut in frustration. For as smart as he was, Rudy, in many ways, was still a child emotionally. He was also prone to forgetting things. In this case, he had forgotten to stock up on Code Red. Rudy looked at the clock, adjusted the glasses on his freckled face, and decided to walk up to the store. It was the weekend, and there were plenty of gaming hours to burn. He looked at the water tap in his kitchen, contemplating whether he should pour himself a glass of water and keep going. "Fuck that," he said out loud to himself.
Rudy walked into his bedroom, and peeled a gray, hooded sweatshirt out of a dirty pile of clothing. He gave it a good sniff, and then slipped it on over his head after deciding it smelled "good enough," which is single-person code for "No one is going to get close enough to me for it to matter." Rudy grabbed his wallet and keys from the top of his dresser and headed out the door.
He huffed down the stairs, enjoying the silence of the building. If only he could limit his time out in the real world to the time between 1:30 and 5 o'clock in the morning, then he would be happy. All those annoying people tucked snugly in their beds, no lines to stand in, nothing but cool air, silence, and a complete lack of human interaction... unless you counted talking to convenience store clerks as human interaction. He did not.
Rudy pulled his phone from his pocket, and pulled up his new favorite game. He loved the game's angles, math, and predictability. He shambled through the lobby, oblivious to his surroundings. If he had looked up, he would have seen the trail of blood that led into the security office. Instead, he flung a bird dressed up like Luke Skywalker across the screen of his phone with the flick of his finger, while he wondered if Luke Skywalker could use the force to bring himself a bottle of Code Red from his apartment.
Chapter 4: Teach
The napkin around the base of his beer was soaked with brew. The bartender seemed to have a difficult time pouring a glass of beer without getting as much on the outside of the glass as he did on the inside. Teach reached for the glass and upended it, letting the cold foamy liquid wash over the scar tissue where his tonsils had been. The night was young, school was over, and he had no papers to grade the next day. Now if he could only manage to pay for some air conditioning in his house, then life would be perfect.
He supposed his wife and ten-year-old son were fast asleep at home. For a brief second, he felt a pang of guilt. One night a month at the bar wasn’t too much to ask he supposed. As he finished the last drop of his beer, he smacked his lips and ordered another.
The bartender, either lazy, a simpleton, or both attempted to pour another beer. He watched as the lanky dude set the glass under the tap, opened it fully and allowed foam to pile up. He tipped the glass and spilled foam out into the drain underneath the taps. So much beer wasted… it’s as if he had never learned to pour a beer in his life. After three more cycles of alcohol abuse, the bartender spun around and set the beer on his napkin, which was probably more beer than paper at that point.
“Here you go, Teach.”
Everyone called him Teach. That’s what people did when you were a teacher, and Teach was as teachery a teacher as ever there was. His life was educating kids. He had never even dreamed of getting another job, not even when his classes had swelled to forty kids per class. At five classes a day, that was 200 hundred names to memorize. It kept his brain sharp, and while his life was overly full during the school year, when the summer hit, the blissfully empty days more than made up for the aggravation of excessively involved parents, poorly prescribed curriculum, and kids who would simply never amount to anything.
Teach fished a handful of dollar bills out of his pocket and handed them to the man. Brown foam floated on top of black liquid. The foam only made up a third of the beer, so he made sure to hand the man an extra one-dollar bill as a tip. Maybe he could buy some beer-pouring lessons with the money.
It was the last of his cash, so he stared lazily at the beer on the counter, making it last as long as he could. Once his cash ran out, he would head home. That was his rule, and he followed it religiously. Teach watched the foamy bubbles burst and disappear, imagining that each bubble made a barely audible pop as it burst.
He spun around on the chair, and admired the bar. Its emptiness was vast, and the quiet was something special. The Sleazy Goat
had definitely seen better days, although he didn’t know when. As long as he had been frequenting the joint, there were only ever a handful of people sitting around in its faded, orange vinyl seats, sipping beers at scratched, wooden tables propped level with piles of matchbooks. Old beer promos covered every inch of available space, with the exception of the bar and the tables. It was if the owner never said "no," and never took anything down. The Corona poster in the corner looked as if it were from the '70s.
Teach leaned back on the stool and looked at the ceiling. A stuffed goat head. the namesake of the bar, hung on the wall. It didn't look sleazy, but it definitely looked dirty. Dust covered its face and hung from its scraggly beard. It was a sad way for an animal to end up.
Teach raised the glass of stout to his lips and sucked in a mouthful of foam. Maybe he’d be lucky enough to score some of that velvety, caramel-flavored stout the next time around. "If it ain't stout, get the fuck out," he muttered to himself.
A haggard old man walked into the bar, shot Teach a half-assed salute and sat down on one of the cracked, pleather stools at the bar. Teach had seen the man before. He might have even talked to him. It was hard to tell. He only ever allowed himself one night at the bar a month, and hardcore alcoholics all tended to wind up looking the same after a while, ruddy faces, excessive wrinkles, and that look in their eyes that seemed to say, “My god, when is the world going to end?”
Teach knew that if it weren’t for his beautiful wife and kid at home, he would probably look much the same. He supposed the people at the bar simply didn’t have anything that great to live for.
Teach lifted his glass, and as the cool, black liquid touched his lips, the door burst open. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the thick refreshment of the stout. He set the glass on the bar and wiped some residual foam off of his upper lip with the back of his hand. As he went to let out his customary “ahh” of approval, a pair of feverish hands wrapped their fingers around his throat.
Teach was wrestled off the stool. He couldn't see who was attacking him, and somehow, this made everything worse. Teach panicked and tried to scream, but he couldn’t force enough air out of his lungs to make a sound. Panic welled up in him as he tried to scream. A sharp pain shot through his shoulder. At first, there was a sensation of intense pressure, as if he was being pinched, and then the pressure was gone, replaced by the white-hot burning of exposed nerve endings. Hot blood ran from a ragged bite wound along the upper part of his trapezius.
“Help him!” yelled the old man. Teach heard shattering as the bartender vaulted over the bar, knocking pint glasses to the ground. The bartender struggled with his attacker, and for a brief second, the hands that were wrapped around his throat let go, and he sucked breath through his ragged and barely functioning windpipe. He rolled out of the way, and got to his feet unsteadily to finally lay eyes on his attacker.
It was a skinny man, unremarkable but for the chunk of Teach’s shoulder hanging out of his mouth. Teach's stomach flipped as he watched the young man slowly chewing on what had formerly been a part of his body. He was perhaps in his twenties, clad in faded jeans and a plain white T-shirt that might be a little too short for him. The bartender had one arm wrapped around the man’s throat. He could hear the skinny man's breath rasping in his throat as he struggled to breathe..
“Help me!” the bartender yelled, struggling to subdue the man.
Teach ran over to help the bartender. Every movement sent fire rushing along his shoulder, the nerve endings awash in pain and blood. He helped the bartender push the man face-first onto the ground.
“Jesus Christ,” the old man muttered. “Is he on PCP?”
“His body feels like it’s on fire,” the bartender replied.
The bartender put his knee on the back of the man, whose only response was to gnash his teeth and struggle harder.
Teach circled behind the bar, “I’m calling the cops.” As he reached for the phone, the young man in the jeans knocked the bartender off of him and rushed for the old man. The old man’s feeble attempt at escape merely ended up with him on the floor, his legs tangled in the legs of the stool that he had been sitting on. The young man pounced on him, and took a bite out the man’s throat.
It wasn’t like in the movies. They rarely accounted for the durability and elasticity of human skin. The first bite that the old man endured looked painful as hell, and the shriek he let out was an uncivilized thing. The man in the jeans jerked his head violently back and forth until he actually managed to pull the flesh free from the man’s throat. The old man's scream turned into a ragged gurgling as his arms and legs flailed upon the filthy carpet. Teach noticed for the first time that it was green... an odd thing to notice considering the circumstances.
The bartender stood in shock as the old man’s blood squirted across the bar. The next squirt wasn’t nearly as strong. Without thinking, Teach ripped the phone out of the wall and charged the young man in the jeans. It wasn't an effective weapon, but it did the job. When he was done, the phone dripped gore, and the young man twitched on the ground.
The bartender squatted next to the old man. The blood was no longer squirting out of his throat; it merely dribbled. “I think he’s dead, Teach.”
Teach stood up, walked over to his beer, and drained it in one go. “Yeah, well, it looks like they both are. You got a cell phone? I seem to have ripped your landline right out of the wall?”
The blood on his shirt had cooled, but a warmth still ran through his body. He didn’t know if it was shock, the beer, or the fact that he had just killed somebody who was trying to take his life, but he welcomed it.
Chapter 5: Joan
Her phone rang at 2 A.M. Being on call was literally the worst thing that had ever happened to her... yet. There she had been dreaming about swimming in warm ocean water as blue as a Smurf's bottom while shirtless guys waded through the surf to bring her colorful drinks in hollowed-out coconuts, then blam! That damn phone goes off, causing her to sit bolt upright and sending her cat flying through her apartment, but not before it could dig two painful furrows in the flesh of her legs. And for what? To go help the dumbest and the lowest that Portland had to offer. At 2 A.M. you were always dealing with one of three things... some dumbass with something stuffed up their ass, some dumbass who had gotten too drunk or high, or the poor bastard that had been run over by someone who had gotten too drunk or high... occasionally they had something stuffed up their ass as well.
She shrugged into her white doctor's coat and looked at herself in the mirror. It was going to have to be a ponytail day. Joan quickly brushed her teeth, spitting mouthfuls of old, dead bacteria into the sink and watching them whisk away down the drain to a place where no one ever had to pull a grapefruit out of someone's asshole. She had learned long ago that there's absolutely no reason to look nice when one was working late at night at the hospital. You didn't want to look pretty for some of the trash that walked into the place in the dead of morning. She plopped some wet food into her cat's dish and walked out of the door, keys jangling and brown ponytail bobbing back and forth.
Her drive through the city was peaceful. 2:30 in the morning wasn't bad if you wanted to get somewhere. The night was cool, and the heat of the day had faded into a crisp, almost autumnish feel. But autumn was still a few months away. In the meantime, it was time to help stupid people who had maimed themselves in one way or another. It was the time of barbecue accidents, fireworks injuries, and rashes caused by the shaving of pubic hair, which people inevitably thought might be herpes. It was a glorious time to be a doctor. As soon as she walked in the door, she was inundated with a never-ending parade of dumbass.
Her first patient was drunk and burned. The man, who was wearing a Portland Timbers jersey, had a second degree burn on his arm. In addition to the burn he no longer had eyebrows and half his mustache was missing.
"Alright, what happened?" she asked.
"The barbecue..." he started. Then, having lost his train of thought, he merely
made a noise imitating an explosion and then giggled a bit. She straightened him up when he began to lean perilously to the side, as if he were going to pass out. He was in a daze mostly as she put the dressing on his arm, which was probably a good thing for him, as the pain most likely would have required some sort of sedative had he not already been three sheets to the wind. When she was finished, she left him where he was, and told the R.N. to find him a room, so he could be re-examined again later.
The next person she saw wasn't much better off, but at least she wasn't drunk. She was just so ill that she had no idea what was really going on. She was an older lady, her hair white and curly, the fine gray down on her lips shone underneath the fluorescent lights, slick with her own mucus. Her husband stood off to the side, wringing his hands in a concerned manner. As she was examining the woman, who was clad only in a stained nightgown that clung to her sweaty body, she leaned to the side and deposited some bile on the floor.
Down the hall, she could hear a commotion building. She heard the shattering of glass and muted yelling and thought, "Great... another junkie." As she installed an I.V. on the patient in front of her, she had no idea how wrong she was.
Chapter 6: Clara
The walls dripped moisture. The hot breath of the packed concert hall's sweaty patrons clung to her own sticky body. The music thumped, vibrating through the air and her body as she ran through the circle, pumping her fist and screaming along with the music.