Fetal Bait Apocalypse: 3 Collections in 1

by Joel Arnold

Not much further…

  She smiled at me. I grew dizzy. Her shredded gums bled over pink lips. Blood dribbled down her chin. She wiped it away with the back of her hand as if it were nothing more than spit.

  We walked through El Jardin. The sparrows screamed at us. The walkways were drenched in shadow, the gazebo a black silhouette against the backdrop of La Parroquia. An elderly man lay on the gazebo steps, moaning, trembling, his left eye open and darting, as if loose in its socket.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  The girl looked back at me, shook her head shyly.

  What was I doing here? Why was I following this child? I looked down at her, at the back of her neck, at the shimmer of her black hair. We left the edge of the zocalo and crossed the street to La Parroquia.

  La Parroquia; a beautiful nightmare church of gothic architecture, sharp parapets, ornate frescoes.

  “We’re going there? But it’s closed.”

  I knew she didn’t understand, but it was one of those alcohol hazy nights where it helps to speak out loud in order to prove you’re not dreaming.

  We walked up pink stone steps to a set of monstrous wooden doors studded with rivets. She let go of my hand, grabbed the brass knob and leaned back. It swung silently open. A cool breeze ripe with the scent of candle wax, old paper, and wet rock caressed my face. She wiped blood from her chin, looked back at me and smiled.

  Quick footsteps slapped the stone behind me. I whirled around. An older woman, face grim, radiating anger, grabbed the girl around the waist, picked her up, and spat at me.

  “Turista!”

  I brushed the spit off my neck, stood there, dumbfounded. Watched as the woman carried her daughter away.

  Voices bubbled out from the church.

  I’d visited during the day, marveled at the opulence, the highly detailed statues of saints, the thick gold leaf suffocating the altar. Now, as I stepped inside, it was all musty darkness. A soft talcum glow rose from the stairway descending to the catacombs, off-limits to visitors except on the Day of the Dead.

  Murmurs. A barely audible chant. A dull steady beat rising from beneath the floor.

  The glow in the stairway intensified. And then a voice. Beautiful. Young. Singing. It was a soft warm caress across my soul. I drifted toward the stairway, hovered over the steps, lost to the music. How could I turn away from something so beautiful?

  I was halfway down the steps when someone screamed.

  The beat turned into a sharp percussive attack that jostled every bone, every organ in my body. I thought my bones would shatter, crumble to dust. I fell back, crab-walked up the steps, ran to the door.

  Nobody stopped me. I ran a frantic mile back to the hotel.

  As I lay in bed, waiting for the room to spin, I wondered briefly about the young girl, about her ruined mouth. I thought about my own little girl, waiting back home. What would I have done if I saw her hand in hand with a stranger about to go into a dark church?

  I wondered about the beautiful voice that drifted up from the catacombs.

  I called home the next morning.

  “Jane, it’s me. How’s Peanut?” My pet name for Shelly, our eight-year-old daughter.

  “She misses you, but otherwise, she’s fine. How are you?”

  “I’m good. I can’t talk long. I just — I just wanted to know how she’s doing. Can I talk to her?”

  “She’s at school. Remember? School?”

  “Oh yeah. What about you? Holding up?”

  The way she breathed over the phone, just one breath; I visualized her. Shoulders slumped, eyes closed, nose pinched slightly as she tried to control her breathing.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “You’re still coming home Thursday?”

  “Yes.” I rested my head against the payphone. “I think I’ll be alright now. I had lots of time to think.”

  “You get some writing done?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. John? I miss you.”

  I sighed. “Miss you, too. Give Peanut a hug.”

  We said goodbye and hung up.

  I packed my suitcase for the flight home, then took the short stroll to the bar. Tecate, tequila, and tortillas. I began to panic. Three weeks of soul searching, and I hadn’t found a goddamn thing. It was the first time I’d been alone — really alone — in the ten years of our marriage.

  I knew I missed Jane. Who was I kidding? Maybe things weren’t perfect, but they weren’t all that bad, either. And I certainly missed Shelly. Peanut. Missed her smile, her voice, her laugh. So what was there to think about? What else did I need?

  On the way back to the motel, the sound of moaning stopped me. I looked down the nearest alley. A man stumbled over the cobblestones, apparently drunk. Every few feet he stopped and propped himself up against rough stucco walls. He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a fistful of -- something. He stopped. Leaned against the wall. Stared at the contents of his hand.

  Blood dripped from his mouth and spattered on the stones like raindrops.

  He shook his head. Frowned at what he held. Slowly turned his hand over, letting the contents scatter over the ground.

  Tiny white things. Chiclets? Bright-eyed children sold them to tourists in the zocalo. The man gathered himself and continued along the alley. More white things fell from his pockets, hitting the street like dice.

  I followed. They weren’t Chiclets. They were hard as pebbles beneath my shoes.

  I bent down. Picked one up.

  It was a tooth. A speck of blood still glistened on the root.

  His mouth…

  The girl’s mouth…

  Not much further.

  I followed him to La Parroquia. He paused at the foot of the steps that led to its entrance. He put his head in his hands. I stood at the edge of the zocalo watching, listening to his sobs. He abruptly turned and walked away.

  But I didn’t.

  I stayed.

  “Jesus, John — what is it you’re looking for? Are you tired of this? Tired of being a husband? A father? What are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know. I—”

  Through the large front doors. Down the rough stone steps. Already, the music, that beautiful, saintly voice, pulling me down those steps like a soft velvet rope strung around my waist. I didn’t understand what she sang, but the words weren’t important — it was the way she sang — the melody, the timbre of her voice.

  At the bottom of the steps, this is what I saw—

  Slabs carved into the stone floor, the coverings of graves etched with the names of dead clergymen. Standing on these tombs were twenty people in a circle — men, women, children — their backs bare and golden in the light of torches, eyes alight with ecstasy, chins dripping blood. And all of their teeth intact. The singing came from within the circle.

  Why didn’t I turn and run?

  The singing pulled me closer. A sweet melancholic sound full of love. Hope. There was nothing to be afraid of here. I nudged my way into the circle.

  She stood over a rough wooden table. As she sang, she smiled. In each of her hands was a long, sharp knife.

  She was as beautiful as her voice. Jet-black hair. Skin the color of melting caramel. I couldn’t tell you how old she was. Thirty? Sixteen? I leaned in through the crowd of people to see what was on the table.

  The man she worked her knives through wore the robes of a priest. The robes were spread apart to expose his body.

  There wasn’t much left.

  She sang. Looked at me. Continued singing as she smiled, then carved out a piece of the man’s thigh. She scooped it up with one of her knives and handed it to the person closest to her. It was passed from hand to hand until it reached me. I held it, the hunk the size of a coin purse, and felt it throb against my palm. I looked at the woman. She nodded. Beautiful words flowed from her lips. Beautiful intoxication.

  I lifted the flesh to my lips and ate.

  The circle closed around me. Hands slapped and patted me
on the back. Teeth. So many teeth. Lips pulled back in crimson smiles of rapture. Why wasn’t I revolted? Why didn’t I run screaming at what I had done?

  The singing continued. The knives kept moving within the robes of the dead priest. The circle reformed and resumed their bloody communion. The drumming started.

  The drumming of the dead.

  It was the same pounding I’d heard the last time in the church when I thought my bones would shatter. It came from within the stone tombs, the former bishops and priests of the church playing a tribal rhythm of unholy joy. What had aroused them? What caused them to celebrate along with the living?

  And this time…

  The drumming…

  The beat coursed through my bones, my blood, took over the beating of my heart. I felt myself as one with everyone in the catacombs, living and dead alike.

  I’d never felt such pure joy.

  I stayed until there was nothing left of the desecrated priest. I stayed, hoping someone else would be brought fresh to the table. When the singing stopped, when the percussion of the dead stopped, the circle broke.

  I found myself alone in an alley.

  Hungry and alone.

  My stomach growled. I wondered if the old man with the darting eye had passed out on the gazebo. I stumbled toward the zocalo. If anyone saw me, they would’ve judged me drunk.

  The old man lay on his side on the gazebo steps, groaning in his sleep, his snores wet and throaty. I hovered over him. Reached down to touch him. Ran my fingers over his cheek. His eyes opened slowly. Bloodshot eyes. Eyes that held no fear. He smiled.

  Tiny silver crosses were jammed haphazardly into his gums. When he laughed, blood trickled out. He babbled incoherently, the words crucified on the bramble of metal in his mouth.

  I turned and ran as fast as I could, trying to outrun the hunger, the anticipation of flesh squishing warmly in my mouth. I flew blindly into the hotel, burst into my room and collapsed on the bed.

  Time passed. Two hours? Three? My hands became numb from gripping the sheets. I sat up. Looked across the room in the mirror. Dried blood decorated my chin. I looked at my hands. Had I run across town with these gore-soaked claws? Oh God, oh God…

  How dare I cry to God? Why should He help me?

  I crept to the bathroom. Looked in the mirror. Grabbed my bottom lip between thumb and forefinger and yanked down. I stared at my teeth. My stomach growled. I wanted more.

  More.

  I wanted to sink my teeth into flesh, wanted to tear skin from bone, savor the flavor, the texture on my pulsing tongue.

  - god oh god oh god please god just one more taste, one more bite, one more one more one more—

  I stood there panting like a starving dog.

  Tomorrow. I had to leave tomorrow. I had to fly home. What would I do when I saw my family again? Pink drool rained from my lips. I thought of my daughter, my Peanut.

  How good she would taste. The feel…

  Oh god oh god

  No god NO!

  I struck the mirror hard with my fist. It exploded in a crash of sparkling shards. Blood gushed from my knuckles. I looked at them, considered stripping the raw flesh from my fingers with my teeth.

  My teeth.

  I grabbed a piece of glass from the sink, the edge slicing into my palm. I opened my mouth.

  This craving. This need.

  I lifted the shard of glass. It gleamed like a dagger in the bathroom lights. I jabbed it into my gums. Dug into the soft pink flesh. Popped out a glistening tooth with a flick of my wrist.

  I decided to cure this craving one tooth at a time.

  I never boarded the plane.

  My mouth still bleeds, especially when the craving is at its worst. There are times when I see the others — the little girl, the old man from the gazebo, the man from the alley. We gather at the steps of the monstrously beautiful church, longing to go inside. But our mouths are useless now. We are unable to gnash and tear, unable to satisfy our need, our primal need, to feel the warmth of flesh squish between our teeth.

  We are unable to satiate the craving we share.

  More have joined us. Those who believed they could remove the craving by simply removing their teeth. We laugh and cry at our stupidity. So we do what we can.

  We look upon the doors of the church, strain to hear the primal rhythms of the dead, and imagine.

  We imagine.

  It is all we have.

  Seller’s Market

  This is our house. A modest three-bedroom rambler painted light blue. The backyard fences in a deck and a beautiful red maple. An ancient oak stands out front. Boxes full of petunias grace the windows like mascara, and there are several large bleeding hearts on either side of the front steps.

  It’s a pleasant neighborhood. Quiet for the most part. Not a lot of kids. I mow the lawn, take out the garbage. Do the dishes, the cleaning. There’s a lot of work to be done to make this house presentable. A lot of sacrifices.

  We’d been living in a one-bedroom apartment for our first two years of marriage. When Ellen learned she was pregnant, the urge to buy a house suitable for raising a family came upon her like an unstoppable freight train.

  “I can’t stand it here anymore. It’s so cramped. This is no place to raise a family.” She pats her stomach, which barely shows at this point. “I want a yard. A garden.”

  I look up from the evening news.

  “I’m suffocating,” she says.

  Saturday morning she’s up at the crack of dawn. She scrambles eggs for breakfast, brews coffee, butters toast. The real estate section from the morning newspaper lays spread out on the kitchen table. Thick red marker circles the properties she wants to see.

  It’s insane. Every house we look at is sold within an hour of our arrival. Twice we find houses we’re excited about, and twice they’re bought out from under us before we even have a chance to check out the basement.

  It’s like that on Sunday, too.

  I suggest we wait until the market cools off.

  “Are you kidding me?” Ellen snaps. “Every night I can hear the couple next door coughing and snoring, and the people stomping on the floor above us at all hours of the day. How many times have they jacked up the rent on us here? They think they can screw us over anytime they want. I can’t stand it.”

  We look every day of the following week, and the results are the same. Nothing. Insanity. It’s a seller’s market.

  Ellen gets grumpier each day. Short-tempered. She spends more and more time at night on the phone with her best friend Ruth Grayson, her sharp words muffled through the bedroom door.

  It is two weeks later that I arrive home after work to find my wife sitting on the couch with a serene look on her face. She turns to me as I enter.

  “I’ve found a home.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “I mean I bought one. It’s ours.” She ignores the stupefied look on my face. “Ruth introduced me to a real estate agent yesterday.”

  “Ruth?”

  “The first place he showed me was perfect. I hope you don’t mind, honey, but I had to act quickly.”

  “Couldn’t you have called me?”

  “I told you — I had to act quickly.”

  A little something about Ruth Grayson; she makes me sick. I hate the way she boasts of her conquests, of how easy it is to seduce a happily married man, the simplicity of getting him to betray his wife and children. I don’t like the way Ellen responds to this nonsense. She laughs, as if it were all some kind of joke.

  Ruth once tried to seduce me. One night when Ellen was gone, she came over and asked for her.

  “She’s out,” I told her. “I thought you knew that.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” She laughs. Walks into our house, brushing past me. Turns and winks. “I did know that.” She unbuttons her blouse and pulls it open.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “What’s it look like I’m doing?”

  She reaches over an
d brushes her hand over my crotch.

  “It’s time for you to go.”

  “Oh, come on now,” she says. “Ellen’s not here.”

  “She’s your best friend.”

  “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

  She reaches back for my crotch. I slap her hand away. Grab her by the shoulders and turn her toward the door.

  “Seriously,” I say. “Get the hell out of here.”

  “Oh, come on now.”

  “Out.”

  “Prude.”

  “Slut.”

  She leaves, buttoning her blouse, laughing.

  I hate her. And what’s more, part of me thinks it’s some game she’s playing with me, a game that Ellen is in on. A wager, perhaps. I can just hear her bragging to Ellen how she can seduce any married man she wants to.

  And Ellen says, “Not Roger.”

  And Ruth says, “Oh, no?”

  “Just try it.”

  “You’re on.”

  And as I imagine Ellen laughing, I feel like I want to throw up.

  Jealousy is a dangerous emotion. It clouds the mind. It influences us irrationally and blinds us from the truth. I become suspicious that Ellen is having an affair with our real estate agent.

  “Ruth recommended this guy?” I ask.

  Ellen nods. She has trouble looking directly into my eyes.

  “You were lucky,” I say, testing her. “To find a place so easily with this guy, even in this current housing market.”

  Ellen nods again. I try to get her to look at me, but she won’t.

  “He just showed you this house. Said it’s yours if you want it?”

  Ellen yawns. “I’m tired,” she says. “I had a busy day.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  Then she snaps. “Look, what are you trying to imply?” Her eyes flash. “I got the house fair and square. It’s a nice house, and now you’re accusing me—” She stops.

  “Accusing you of what?” I ask.

  Her eyes smolder. My heart races.

  “You should thank me,” she says.

  I leave the room.

  It doesn’t matter that she is four months pregnant. All I can see is the beauty she radiates. All I can think of is how desirable she is, how another man’s eyes would smolder at the sight of her, how lurid fantasies would slink through his head.