by Joel Arnold
But what about Amy? What if she doesn’t make it through the night?
He felt her forehead, listened carefully to her breathing, watched her chest rise and fall, rise and fall. She seemed fine, but he couldn’t trust his own senses any more. The stars looked like they’d been smeared across the sky with a paint brush. His skin tingled.
What’s happening to me? Was it happening to Amy as well?
What is that thing’s blood doing to me?
He opened his mouth to call out to Amy, to wake her and ask her how she felt, but his tongue no longer worked. It felt like dozens of tiny ants skittered over his teeth and gums. He fell back on the hard ground, losing consciousness to the sound of crickets chirping, singing his name.
The violet haze of an early dawn…
Luke woke in long, slow stages. When he tried to speak, there was only a wet, whistling sound. The right side of his body felt sticky and numb. Snot dripped from his nose into his mouth. He felt something next to him. He struggled to turn his head.
“Amy?” he finally managed. He couldn’t focus.
There was no answer, and his heart tried to beat out of his chest in panic.
But then — movement.
“Dad?”
His ears felt stuffed with wet cotton.
“Amy? You okay?”
Something wasn’t right. Something…
Then he felt it, felt what was wrong, as Amy moved next to him, as feeling returned to his body. Their skin — it oozed clear liquid onto the ground around them. Their skin — full of welts and cysts.
Their skin—
—fused together where his arm lied over her chest.
“Jesus,” Luke croaked.
What else could he say?
His vision cleared, and he saw that she was worse off than he was, her entire body a mass of suppurating sores.
“God,” he said.
“Dad?” Amy turned her dripping eyes toward him. “It’s okay.”
“No.” Luke tried to shake his head.
“We won’t charge people. We won’t make them pay.”
“What?”
“We can heal now. Don’t you see?”
And he did see. Out of the corners of his eyes, thick with matter, he saw the hard, rocky ground around their bodies sprouting small, green shoots. His attention turned back to his daughter as a tube-like appendage unraveled from her mouth. She spoke around it.
“There are so many who need us,” she said. “So many…”
The appendage wavered for a moment, as if sensing the air. It hovered in front of Luke’s eyes, and then gently, it settled onto a cyst widening on Luke’s forehead. With soft sucking sounds, it began to drink.
Narcissus in Links
I’ve seen fog in the valley many times, but never quite like this. Rivulets of blue swirl and eddy through it like blueberries blending into vanilla ice cream. At first, I thought it was a trick of the light, of clouds flying quickly through the bright blue sky, but now I have to wonder.
A week ago, I conducted a computer search on my name. I’ve been getting a few things published lately, and I wanted to know; had I become somebody on the wide-open plains of the World Wide Web?
In the real world, my wife Jill is the breadwinner of the family. She does well enough to pay the mortgage on our 3,000 square foot home, as well as letting me take a sabbatical from work to pursue a career in writing fiction. I assured her I’d easily make five grand the first year, then gradually increase each year after that, what with the book deals, the sale of foreign and movie rights, etc, so that she’d be able to quit and we could move to a ranch in Montana, own horses and have parties where our new friends would trade recipes for home-brewed beer. I’ve been at it over a year now, and my gross receipts for short stories have totaled $87.21. That didn’t even cover my bar tab at the last World Fantasy Convention. And of the five novels I was planning to write this first year (one every two months with two one-month working vacations where I’d travel and do research) I’ve filled five pages up with notes. And of those five pages, two of them have phone messages I jotted down for Jill.
But so…
Maybe — just maybe — I was gaining some momentum on the web.
I typed in “Ben Cleaver” with quotes around the whole thing, waited a few seconds, and up popped the first ten links. Ten out of 497. Wow! 497 links to Ben Cleaver. My presence was alive and well on the virtual silken weaves of the ‘net. But as I scrolled down the page, my head deflated. Apparently I wasn’t the only Ben Cleaver in the universe. In fact, most of the Ben Cleavers listed were not me.
There was a Ben Cleaver on the East Valley High wrestling team in Colorado. A Ben Cleaver who dealt in Meerschaum pipes. A Ben Cleaver who was principal of an elementary school. And look at this guy! A Ben Cleaver who was vice-president of Val-Corp, apparently a large company by the number of links pointing to it. Mostly press releases quoting him on things like “chain supply management” and “cost-effective global networking.”
Then there was a Ben Cleaver who died in the civil war. This one intrigued me. I clicked on the link, and for the first time ever, found myself face to face with another Ben Cleaver. He stared stiffly over my right shoulder in full Union garb. It was one of those old, grainy sepia-toned prints. Odd to see someone who once owned my name over a hundred years before I was born.
And look at that! Finally. A link to a message board on which I lavished praise on Don D’Auria, editor at Leisure Books. “Don, I appreciate you publishing the works of…”
The computer froze up. Damn it!
I rebooted.
As I waited for the computer to get its act together, I wondered how many other Ben Cleavers were out there. I wanted to leave my mark upon this world, but who was to say my mark wouldn’t get lost among a multitude of other Ben Cleavers? A feeling of pointlessness ran its scrawny fingers over my thighs, plucking at my little black leg hairs.
The computer sparked back to life.
I entered“Ben Cleaver.”
420 hits. Hadn’t there been more last time?
Another intriguing link took me to a site called The House of Platinum, founded by one Ben Cleaver. It looked as if an Arabic street bazaar had vomited a tray of baubles and trinkets across the screen. In the center was a Taj Mahal-looking place encrusted with jewels. Was it a record company? A strip club? Nope. It was a cult.
Thoughts ran through my head, the silly thoughts of a once care-free man—
Perhaps I should start my own cult. Use my middle initial so as not to be confused with the House of Platinum guy. Maybe I could call it The House of Vinyl Siding.
And—
What if I contacted these other Ben Cleavers? We could create a Ben Cleaver Society. Pool our resources and buy a ranch in Montana. Populate it with nothing but Ben Cleavers!
Thoughts like that.
I hit the back button.
My computer froze up again.
Hadn’t I wasted enough time? I’d already eyeballed the first hundred links, and as far as this Ben Cleaver was concerned, there wasn’t much to write home about. If anything, it made me feel like a grain of sand in a dirty kitty-litter box. I apparently didn’t rank very high on the Ben Cleaver totem pole.
Ben Cleaver; vice-president of a large company.
Ben Cleaver; faced death and caught it in the civil war.
Ben Cleaver; principal at an elementary school.
Ben Cleaver; leader of a cult.
And what could be said about me?
Ben Cleaver; message board stalker of writers much more talented than I.
But…
What if…
I hit the restart button, logged back onto the net, brought up the search engine and typed in my name.
396 hits. Huh. Did I do something different this time, or is the net really such a fickle mistress?
I skipped ahead to links 120-130.
Another blurb of mine on a message board.
“Mort, I’m a bi
g fan. Where do you get your ideas?”
Okay, did everything need a fucking link to it?
Then there was the web page of a Steven Ben Cleaver. A youngster, apparently, who’d made it on some honor roll.
I never made the honor roll.
Another Ben Cleaver who was an endocrinologist.
More of Ben Cleaver, vice-pres of Val-Corp. The same press release over and over.
More civil war links to Ben Cleaver.
Shouldn’t a name be like a snowflake? A fingerprint? A strand of DNA? Something unique like a domain name, a patent, a social security number?
Jill shouted from the bedroom. “Aren’t you finished checking your email?”
“Be right there.”
I logged off.
As I write this, all is silent on the highway that winds past our backyard. No roar of semis or cars or motorcycles. And there’s no singing of birds, or the playful holler of the neighborhood children. And that fog — that blueberry swirl fog — is creeping up the hill.
I stopped checking the links to my name for a few days, but two nights ago—
I typed in “Ben Cleaver.”
217 hits.
I realize it can change daily, but that’s less than half of what it was when I first conducted this search.
More silly thoughts from what was still, at that time, a care-free man—
Was a conspiracy underway to get rid of all the Ben Cleavers of the world? Was the idea of a society of Ben Cleavers too much? Perhaps one of the other Ben Cleavers wanted to eliminate us one by one until only he remained. I suspected Ben Cleaver, vice-president of Val-Corp. To reach a position like that, you have to be crafty. Ruthless. He was only one step away from being on top of his company, so why not dominate the playing field of names as well?
Thoughts like that.
I scrolled through the search results. There was the usual cast. Civil War Ben Cleaver. Val-Corp vice-president Ben Cleaver. House of Platinum Ben Cleaver. Honor roll Ben Cleaver. Another inane blurb I left on a message board. Is it really necessary for these to be linked? I’ll have to watch what I say in the future, or at least not post after four rum and Cokes.
“Hey Mort, man — you rock! I mean, you really rock!!” I felt like pounding my head onto the keyboard.
Jill again. “Ben? Honey? You coming to bed?”
The women I’ve known don’t value the importance of alone time. Jill has said that if she were never alone for the rest of her life, it would be fine with her. In fact, she’d prefer that. Prefer constant company, continuous companionship.
I used to think this was a strange defect particular to women. But maybe I’m the one with the defect. Maybe Jill’s longing for constant companionship, whether it be with me or her family or friends, is a symptom of altruism, pure and simple. A desire to share. Maybe that’s the true sign of unselfishness.
Maybe I should spend more time with her.
My computer stopped working only ten minutes ago, so I’m going to write as fast as I can the old-fashioned way; on a pad of paper. With a pen.
I can no longer see the valley below. The phones aren’t working. I don’t know where Jill is. I shut the computer room window this morning, because what if that strange fog seeps into our house?
But…
Last night. Paranoia set in. Only 103 hits when I entered “Ben Cleaver”. The vice-president of Val-Corp and all his captivating press releases were gone. Maybe their computers were down. Their network? Hell, I didn’t know how it worked. But other Ben Cleavers were gone, too. The elementary school principal. The honor roll student.
I hit reload. The hits dropped to 98. I stared at the screen.
Hit reload again.
97.
Reload.
Still 97.
I noticed that civil war Ben Cleaver had disappeared.
Jill called out from the bedroom. “Ben?”
“In a minute.”
“How long are you going to be?”
“Just a minute!”
I tapped on the mouse. Hit reload again.
Exhaled. The number of hits remained at 97.
I had to stop. I had to pry myself away from the screen. I didn’t know what this was all about, but it couldn’t be something bad, could it? The worst it could be was some computer virus roaring across the virtual highway like a PCP freak on a Harley. Right?
I pushed the chair away from the computer, walked zombie-like down the hall and fell into bed.
“Sorry I snapped at you,” I whispered, but Jill was already out. I kissed the back of her neck and watched her sleep. She looked so vulnerable. A sleeping child. I rolled onto my back, but the pillow wouldn’t conform correctly to the shape of my head. It’s hard to fall asleep when you have so much to say, but don’t know how to say it, or are afraid to say it, or don’t want to wake up the one you want to say it to because she’s so goddamn beautiful laying there, and you feel that if you wake her, you’ll ruin something so pure and perfect and rare.
But mostly, I thought about the links.
What was going on?
And why should I care if tomorrow there were only fifty hits? Twenty hits? What difference would it make?
I told myself I wouldn’t even check. Not tomorrow. Not the next day. Forget about it. I won’t even check my email until Friday. It was Tuesday then, so I figured three days of no checking. Jill’s right when she says I’m too damn obsessive about my email. Especially since all I get is spam about enlarging my penis and *** HOT COED COLLEGE GIRLS *** and Look and Feel Younger in Just 10 Days!
So who cares? Who cares if I don’t find out until Friday? Not me, boy. No way.
When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of cotton candy. I haven’t had cotton candy in over a decade, but I woke up craving it.
Before Jill woke up, I snuck down to the computer and fired it up.
How could I not look? Just a quick peek. I brought up the search engine.
Typed in “Ben Cleaver”.
Only two hits.
Two.
The note I’d left on Mort Castle’s message board. (Hey Mort, man — you rock!)
The other was for The House of Platinum.
Doesn’t matter. No big deal.
I tapped nervously on the mouse. I looked outside.
The valley below was engulfed in the blueberry swirl ice-cream fog. It crept up the hill in softly rolling waves. My hand trembled over the mouse. I was afraid to hit reload.
“Jill?”
She didn’t answer.
“Jill? Wake up!”
I clicked on The House of Platinum link. Instead of the website, an error message popped up informing me that the site no longer existed.
I hit the back button. Hit reload.
One hit.
Me.
“Jill!”
I looked out the window. The blue haze rolled up gently to the highway that wound past our house. Concrete crumbled and dissolved as the haze drifted over it.
“Jill, damn it, wake up!”
Where was the smoke and dust? The sounds of explosions? Screams? Where was the fire and brimstone and the blare of Gabriel’s trumpet? Where, oh God, where is Jill?
It’s so quiet. Peaceful. Beautiful. The fog laps at the foundation of our house like a playful kitten. It rises softly. Quietly. Reminds me of cotton candy.
I keep staring at my reflection in the blank computer screen. Once I put down this pen, it’ll be all I have left.
Branding Day
The children gathered at the fence of the corral, jockeying for position as the cowhands separated the calves from their mothers. The calves bawled, jumped and kicked to the amusement of the students, while their mothers groaned with eyes rolling wildly and milk dripping from their teats onto the dusty ground.
My class had three children who stayed home that day, which was better than previous years. The first year we took a field trip to Culver’s Farm, only nineteen of my thirty-four third-graders attended. Parents re
tain the right to keep their kids home on branding day, but they seem to have grown more tolerant of the excursion. I think it’s a good way for the kids to see how the world works. And hell, any reason to get out of the city, with its gray skies, buildings and sidewalks, and into the fresh air of farm country is good enough for me.
All three third-grade classes from Lincoln Elementary were there, as well as the third graders from Roosevelt and Martin Luther King elementary schools. A lot of kids, and it was already a hot day.
I passed out popsicles and bottled water to the children in my class. Even though we had to pay for these out of our own pockets, I felt it was the least I could do. Most of the other teachers did the same, except Ms. Durphy, also from Lincoln, who filled up plastic gallon milk jugs with lukewarm tap water. I felt sorry for her students. They eyed our fruit-flavored popsicles with longing. I wished I’d brought enough for her class, but that would be an affront to Durphy’s authority. She was one of those gems who took out her personal problems on her class and passed it off as a way to get through to them. Frankly, I think all she needed was another bull dyke to come along and give her a couple good nights with a strap-on. Might put her in a better mood for a few days.
I waved at her when she glanced my way. “Morning, Janet.”
She nodded curtly, her eyes narrowed. She hated it when I didn’t address her as Ms. Durphy in front of the kids. As if they gave a shit. I encourage my class from the get-go to call me Ben. If you want to get through to the kids, show them some respect.
A student of mine tugged at my shirtsleeve. Tim Crocker. “Does it hurt?”
I put my hand on his shoulder and squatted. “Remember what we talked about in class? It doesn’t really hurt. Maybe for a little while, but they have thick hides.”
He looked nervous, as if a handful of bees buzzed around his frizzy black hair.
“It’s like when you get a shot,” I said. “A little sting, and that’s it.” I gave him a pat. “Okay?”
He looked me in the eye, trying to find a lie in there somewhere, then nodded. “Okay. I guess.”