Infinite Doom

by Brian Bowyer

  “You too,” Darnell said. “God bless you.”

  The boy closed the door.

  “That’s awesome that they give you free donuts,” Alicia said.

  Darnell nodded. “The manager doesn’t like me, but the people who work here do. Come on. Let’s go to the park and eat our donuts.”

  Carrying her empty pickle jar, she followed him to a nearby park. He carried the donuts and his walking stick.

  “Where do you want to sit?” Alicia said.

  Darnell shrugged. “You pick.”

  She led him to the park’s edge. They sat down on the ground in the shade beneath the limbs of an oak tree.

  It was a warm summer day. The sun was shining. Joggers were out. A few people walked dogs. The playground was abandoned, but two kids tossed a Frisbee in the distance.

  “Don’t you get hot,” Alicia said, “wearing all those clothes?”

  Darnell shook his head. He had not removed his hood. His walking stick was leaning against the oak tree. He was still wearing his gloves while eating a donut. “No,” he said. “I’m always cold.”

  Alicia picked up a praying mantis and put it in her pickle jar.

  “New pet?” Darnell said.

  “Yes.”

  “Those things are evil.”

  “I know. I want a tarantula, but I can never find one.”

  “I see tarantulas all the time.”

  Alicia’s eyes widened. “You do?”

  “Yes. Next time I see one, I’ll catch it and save it for you.”

  “Thanks!”

  They ate an equal number of donuts until the box was empty. Then Darnell said, “I’m ready for a nap.”

  “Me too,” Alicia said. She stretched out on the ground beside her pickle jar, staring at the praying mantis.

  Darnell stretched out too.

  Soon they were asleep.

  • • •

  The sun was setting when Alicia opened her eyes. She sat up and saw that Darnell was already awake. He was leaning against the oak tree, holding her pickle jar up and looking at the praying mantis in the blood-red light of sunset.

  “Lots of bad mojo associated with these things,” he said. “Almost as bad as black-cat bones.”

  “Should I let it go?”

  He nodded. “Yes. That’s probably for the best.”

  “So release it,” Alicia said.

  He did, and the praying mantis slowly crawled away.

  “How much you want for this jar?” Darnell said. “I had a few, but all of mine broke. I need a jar to keep my gasoline in.”

  “You can just have it,” Alicia said. “I can always get another one.”

  “Thank you.” Darnell stood up. “God bless you.” He put the pickle jar in one of the deep front pockets of his Army field coat.

  “Is there a zoo around here?” Alicia said.

  “Yeah. Not too far from here.”

  “How much does it cost to get in?”

  “I don’t know. I can get us in for free after they close, though. But you probably have to be home soon, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Nine. I turned nine yesterday.”

  “Nine years old, and you don’t have a curfew?”

  “No. My mother’s a junkie. She never even knows when I’m away.”

  “What’s she hooked on?”

  “Heroin. She shoots it up with needles. Her boyfriend’s a junkie, too. His name is Alan. I hate him. Sometimes, Alan rapes me.”

  “He rapes you?”

  “Yes. But only when he can find me. I’m very good at hiding from him. When he does find me, I just go to other places in my mind.”

  Darnell nodded. “The mind’s an awfully big place. There’s a lot of places people can go and hide inside their minds.”

  They watched the sky grow dark and the stars start sparkling. Then they walked to the zoo. It was already closed when they got there. They circled the perimeter of the property, and then Darnell led Alicia to a cut in the fencing. They waited by the fence until the main lights along the thoroughfare went out and the overnight lamps came on.

  “Most of the staff will be leaving soon,” Darnell said. “And then no one else will be in there but the cleaning crew and the security guards. If anyone sees us, we’ll just run. The security guards are lazy. They won’t chase us.”

  They watched a few cars leave through the front gate to their left. Then they squeezed through the opening in the fence and walked up the deserted pathway. The pavement was rutted. They saw cracked paint and faded signs everywhere. They smelled tar, rancid food, urine, and animal feces.

  “All of the animals look so sad,” Alicia said. “They don’t know how to take care of their pets here.”

  “These aren’t pets,” Darnell said. “They’re puppets for the public. All of these animals are broken creatures who’ve been enslaved for exhibition. The whole thing is terrible and grotesque.”

  “Yes,” Alicia said. “It’s horrible. I wish I could take all of them home as pets. Well, not to my mother’s apartment, of course, but to a farm somewhere. I wish I had a farm that I could take them to and keep them all as pets. That would be a wonderful life.”

  “I wish I could burn this place to the ground,” Darnell said, “but I don’t have enough gasoline. Actually, I don’t have any gasoline. I need to get some.”

  “To start fires at night? To keep yourself warm?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “I’m ready to leave,” Alicia said.

  “There’s a pet store not far from here that sells exotic pets. You want to go see if they’re open?”

  She looked up at him. “Yes.”

  “They may be open, but they may not. Sometimes they’re open all night, and sometimes they’re closed for days. Never can tell about them. It’s also a pawn shop. Do you know what a pawn shop is?”

  “Of course,” Alicia said. “My mother’s a junkie. She’s always pawning her stuff.”

  They left the zoo, climbing their way through the hole in the fence and back out into the city. They walked to a one-story building called PETS ’N PAWN about four blocks south. The lights were out and there was a CLOSED sign on the door.

  Darnell shifted his walking stick from one hand to the other. “Oh well. We can try again tomorrow.”

  Alicia shrugged. “Okay. Do you think they have any tarantulas?”

  “Maybe.”

  They turned around and headed back toward the zoo. Then they walked past the zoo and went downtown. They cut through multiple alleyways in the darkness. They heard strange grunts in the shadows. They also heard whispers, cackled laughter, and empty bottles rolling on the pavement.

  “I’m thirsty,” Alicia said.

  Darnell pointed to a store on a corner down the street. “Come on. I need to get some gasoline. I’ll buy you something to drink.”

  They went to the store and walked inside together. Alicia got a bottle of apple juice. Darnell got a bottle of wine. He paid for their drinks and prepaid for enough gasoline to fill the pickle jar she had given him.

  Outside at the pumps, he filled the jar with gasoline and put it in his jacket. Then they took off walking around downtown again. Darnell finished his wine before Alicia finished her apple juice, even though his bottle was bigger than hers. They tossed their empty bottles in a dumpster and kept walking.

  “One of my friends vanished the other night,” Darnell said. “A witch.”

  “Your friend is a witch?”

  “Yes. She was messing around with some black-cat bones, and something came out of the darkness and snatched her. But I have a key to her apartment, and she might have some tarantulas in there, if you want to go look around.”

  Alicia’s eyes widened, and she smiled. “Yes! I do want to go look around!”

  Darnell nodded. “Okay then. Come on. Let’s go.”

  She followed him to a bric
k-faced apartment building that wasn’t too far from her mother’s apartment. They went inside the building and took an elevator up to the seventh floor. He led her to apartment 7B. He unlocked the door with a key and opened it. They stepped into a narrow central hallway. He closed the door behind them and locked it.

  There were four doors on either side of the hallway. She followed him to the last door on the left. The door was painted black. He opened the door and they entered a windowless room. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the room were painted black. Bright fluorescent lightbulbs in the ceiling provided illumination. There was no furniture in the room. The floor was littered with little white bones.

  “Black-cat bones?” Alicia said.

  Darnell nodded. “Yes. This is the room she disappeared from.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I was with her. And look.” He pointed toward a swirling red dot on one of the walls. “There’s the portal.”

  “The portal?”

  “Yes. She told me that she had opened a portal to other dimensions, and the other night, something reached out and grabbed her. Took her away. I saw it happen. The portal was black the other night, though. Blacker than the walls of this room. Tonight, however, the portal is red.”

  As Alicia watched, the swirling red dot on the wall grew larger. It soon resembled a vertical whirlpool, but full of blood-red gases and smoke instead of water. It also looked like a tunnel. Then something that may have been a large blazing hand (it moved too fast to tell, and was so bright it hurt her eyes) reached out, grabbed Darnell, and yanked him into the tunnel. And then the portal shrank into a swirling red dot on the wall again.

  “Darnell?” she said. “Darnell?”

  Silence.

  Alicia searched the apartment for tarantulas. She didn’t find any.

  • • •

  Alan was waiting for Alicia in the living room when she returned to her mother’s apartment. He was sitting on the loveseat. Her mother was passed out on the sofa.

  He stood up and approached her. “Where the fuck you been?”

  “Looking for pets,” Alicia said.

  He grabbed her by the hair. “I’ll give you a fucking pet.”

  He dragged her into her bedroom. He closed the door and locked it. He threw her onto the bed.

  Alicia closed her eyes and went to another place in her mind.

  • • •

  The next day, Alicia’s mother and Alan were still asleep when she woke up. Their bedroom door was slightly ajar. She pushed it open. Both were snoring softly.

  On Alan’s side of the bed, his jeans had been flung into a corner of the room, on the floor beside his boots and some wadded-up socks. A wallet attached to a chain stuck out of one of the back pockets of the jeans. Alicia tiptoed across the room. The wallet was black with a white skull and crossbones on it. She opened the wallet. It was full of money. Alan was not only a junkie; he was also a drug dealer. Her mother always ended up dating drug dealers. Alicia took about half the money from the wallet and put it in her pocket.

  When she turned to leave the room, she saw Alan’s handgun on his nightstand. Alicia didn’t know much about guns, but she knew enough to aim and pull a trigger. She also knew that Alan’s gun was a semiautomatic and a nine (whatever that meant) because he talked about his gun all the time. She tiptoed over to the nightstand and picked up the gun. It was black. It wasn’t very heavy. It felt like it was made of both metal and plastic. GLOCK 19 Gen 5 AUSTRIA 9x19 was engraved along the side near the top. She aimed the gun at Alan’s face and thought about pulling the trigger. She had a strong urge to do it, but she resisted. Instead, she quietly set the gun back down on the nightstand.

  Alicia had already brushed her teeth and gotten dressed.

  She left.

  • • •

  The night before, Alicia had not locked the witch’s door when she left the apartment, and it was still unlocked the next day when she got there. She opened the door and entered the witch’s apartment. She walked down the hallway and entered the last room on the left.

  The blood-red portal was still a swirling dot on one of the black-painted walls. Everything looked the same except for one thing: there were not nearly as many black-cat bones on the floor as there had been the night before. Last night, there had been many. Today, there were only a few.

  Had they been sucked into the tunnel when Darnell had been yanked away? She couldn’t remember.

  Before she left, Alicia picked up two of the black-cat bones and put them in her pocket.

  • • •

  PETS ’N PAWN was open when she got there. The front of the store was a pawn shop, so she assumed that the pets were in the back. Other than a swarthy, mean-looking man behind the cash register, the place was empty.

  Alicia said, “Do you have any tarantulas?”

  “No.”

  “What all do you have?”

  “Pets are in the back.”

  Alicia went into the back of the store. There weren’t a lot of pets in PETS ’N PAWN. She saw a few dogs and cats in cages. A couple of hamsters. A rabbit. Several fish in filthy tanks that flanked the cages.

  And then she saw a human head in an aquarium on the floor. Alicia got down on her knees for a closer inspection.

  It was the head of a beautiful woman. Her eyes were closed. She had long orange hair that looked like flames burning in the water. If the woman’s head had been severed from a body, it must have been a very clean cut, because Alicia saw no signs of decapitation along the bottom of the neck. The neck just ended smoothly in a perfectly fine, slightly rounded stump—as if the head had never been connected to a body in the first place.

  And then the woman opened her eyes and looked up at Alicia with the most beautiful green eyes she had ever seen. The woman smiled. Hello.

  The woman’s smile never changed because her lips never moved, but Alicia clearly heard the voice in her mind.

  I’m Cora. What’s your name?

  Cora was communicating telepathically because she obviously couldn’t speak. Alicia didn’t know if Cora had vocal cords or not, but she believed that it would be impossible to speak without a set of lungs, and Cora most certainly had no lungs or anything else that a regular person would have below a neck. She assumed that Cora’s brain was receiving oxygen from the water.

  Alicia returned Cora’s smile. “I’m Alicia. It’s nice to meet you.”

  Cora continued to smile. It’s nice to meet you too. Take me home with you and we’ll have so much fun together.

  “Okay,” Alicia said. “Be right back.”

  She went back out front into the pawn shop. The mean-looking man was still standing behind the cash register. “How much for Cora?” Alicia said.

  He shot her a look. “Huh?”

  “The head in the aquarium on the floor. The head with the long orange hair. Come on. I’ll show you.”

  He followed her into the back of the store.

  Alicia pointed at the head in the aquarium. “Her name is Cora. How much do you want for her?”

  “One hundred dollars. You give me one hundred dollars, and you can take her home. Tank and all.”

  Alicia handed him a hundred-dollar bill. “And the wagon out there?” There weren’t many toys in the pawn shop, but Alicia had seen a couple of bicycles and a little red Radio Flyer wagon when she first walked in.

  “The wagon is a hundred dollars, too.”

  She gave him another hundred-dollar bill. “Will you put her in the wagon for me?”

  He nodded. “Sure.” He went out front, got the wagon, and pulled it into the back. Then he unplugged the aquarium from the extension cord it was connected to. He picked the aquarium up and put it in the wagon. “Enjoy your head.”

  “Thank you,” Alicia said.

  She left.

  • • •

  A neighbor man who lived a floor below her was checking his mailbox by the sidewalk when Alicia pulled her wagon up to the steps in front of the buildi
ng. “I’ll give you a hundred dollars,” she told him, “if you’ll carry this aquarium upstairs for me.”

  He looked at her like she was crazy. Then he looked down at the aquarium in the wagon, and shrugged. “Okay.”

  Carrying the wagon, Alicia followed him up to the fourth floor. She paid him at the door after he set the aquarium back down in the wagon. “Can you wait here for a second?”

  “Sure.”

  Alicia opened the door. She didn’t see her mother or Alan in the living room. She turned to the neighbor who had helped her. “If I pull it into my bedroom, will you set the aquarium on my desk for me?”

  “Sure.”

  Alicia pulled the wagon into her bedroom. The man followed. Alicia cleared off her desk. The man lifted the aquarium out of the wagon and put it on her desk. Then he left.

  Alicia parked the wagon in her closet. Then she sat down on the chair at her desk, facing Cora. “How do you like your new home?”

  Cora was smiling and her green eyes were shining. I love it, Alicia. It’s beautiful. And so are you.

  They communicated until Alicia’s eyes grew heavy. Eventually she stretched out on her bed and fell asleep.

  • • •

  The next morning, Alicia was awakened when Alan wrapped a hand around her foot and dragged her out of bed. Her head hit the floor.

  “A fish tank?” he yelled, standing over her. “You stole my money to buy a fucking fish tank?”

  Her mother entered the room. “Calm down, Alan. I’ll make her return the fish tank. Alicia will take the fish tank back and give your money back to you.”

  “You’re goddamn right she will.” He returned his gaze to Alicia. “If I don’t have my money by tomorrow, I’ll kill your stupid octopus and throw the fish tank out the window.”

  Alan and her mother left the room.

  Alicia looked at Cora.

  You’ll have to kill him. Cora wasn’t smiling. She didn’t look angry at all. She just looked sad. If you don’t kill him, he’s going to kill me.

  “I know,” Alicia said. “He thinks you’re an octopus.”

  She got dressed. She went across the hall and brushed her teeth. Then she left and walked downtown to the library.

  She got online at one of the public computers. She typed Glock 19 into the search browser. Then she spent about an hour or so reading information about Alan’s handgun. She knew the gun would be loaded, because she had heard Alan say fifteen in the clip, one in the chamber on several occasions, and Glocks had no safety switches (which apparently prevented a person from pulling a trigger), so she didn’t have to worry about that.