by Brian Hodge
He dropped the chair to the floor, and exhaled dejectedly. I guess I’m stuck in this body for the rest of my life, he thought, trying to ignore the pain that was rocking through his shattered mouth.
“I don’t think so, Wilson,” Carl said.
His skin tingling with shock, Russ looked down at the corpse. Carl was still definitely dead. He gave out a pathetic little squeak when he realized that it was he himself who had spoken aloud.
Carl was back in his body, only now they were in there together. Carl and Russ were one.
It gave him another jolt when he realized that he was only in control of the right side of his body. Apparently, Carl was in control of the left. Fighting madly, Carl/Russ attacked himself, the right and left sides of the body literally under separate authority.
Carl/Russ damn near beat himself to death.
Carl/Russ sat at the table wondering just what in the hell they were going to do. Russ’ body lay on the floor at their feet, reminding them of their situation. The tattoo was making Carl angrier all over again.
“Don’t you go getting all pissed off,” Russ said. “I can hear everything you’re thinking. I didn’t realize you hated me this much, Baldo.”
“Fuck you, Wilson. I want you out of my body now.”
“Levine, do you think I’m here by my choice? Are you forgetting that my beaten corpse is rotting on your kitchen floor?”
Carl tapped the fingers of his left hand on the table absently. He could see his reflection in the mirror. He was startled when he realized that his eyes were moving around in opposite directions, giving him the appearance of a cross-eyed cartoon character. The glaring tattoo on his forehead only worsened the situation. His right eye was looking down at the corpse on the floor, while the left was looking at himself in the mirror. It was unsettling. Was he going to have to spend the rest of his life trapped inside his own body with his enemy?
“We’re going to have to bury the body. I’m-” Carl said, coming to the inevitable solution.
“Bury it?” Russ asked, cutting his enemy off. “Bury it where, you ass? In the backyard like a goddamn pet!”
“Well, actually, yes. Do you think the police are going to buy my story, you imbecile? The body of my neighbor, a person whom I hate, is lying bludgeoned on the kitchen floor. You’re the one who killed your body to begin with, in case you forgot, you dumbfuck fat ass. Do you think the cops are going to believe that we switched brains and now we’re trapped in my body together?”
“I don’t care what they believe, Levine. I’m not going to help my enemy bury my murdered body.”
“A murder in which you happened to commit, you borderline retard.”
Carl’s left hand lashed out and slapped him across the face. “I’m not going to put up with your lip, Levine! I’ve had it with you and your insults!”
The right hand whipped around in a fist and slammed into Carl/Russ’ face violently. “You’ve had it? You’ve had it?”
Carl/Russ didn’t stop the attack until they fell into unconsciousness.
“That cross-eyed loon in there killed his neighbor,” Kenny Joe Butler, the maintenance man said, pointing through the window of the padded room.
“So what’s so crazy about that?” the other worker asked. “People do that shit all the time.”
They looked through the window at the straight-jacketed man with the ‘I Love Jesus!’ tattoo. The man was having a rather heated argument with himself.
“That’s not all, bro. He’s got multiple personality disorder, or something. He claims the neighbor that he killed is inside him. If you remove that straitjacket, he’ll beat himself into unconsciousness.”
“You don’t say,” he said as they continued down the corridor. “That’s got to be something to see.”
“Oh, it is. Every once in awhile we remove the jacket and watch him, uh, I mean them, go at it.”
“Would you shut the hell up already!” Carl/Russ yelled, wriggling around in the jacket, trying desperately to break free.
“Me! Why in the hell should I shut up, Wilson! You’re the one that’s always babbling! This is my body you know!”
“Oh, here we go with that ‘my body’ shit again! Oh man, Levine, you better hope that I don’t break out of this jacket. God, will I fucking beat you, you bald bastard!”
“Please! Just shut up! I’m begging you! I can’t take it! Get out of me!”
Over the years, the arguments started to get pretty redundant.
Fishes Dream of Lonely Things
by Weston Ochse
My mother told me to be careful by the creek. She made me promise never to swim there. She made me promise that if I saw anything strange to come running home. I thought she meant perverts or the homeless or crack addicts. I was wrong.
It was Tuesday when we decided to go fishing. The house was like the pit of hell as Dad always said. I wasn’t allowed to use those words, but I knew what he meant and agreed. Just sitting on the couch was making me sweat through my clothes. David was with me and I was tired of kicking his butt on video games. He wouldn’t give up, though. He demanded to play again and again and again. I even let him win once, but he knew it and got mad and insisted on playing yet one more time. It wasn’t until Mom came in and turned it off that David finally gave in to my superior Nintendo muscles.
We were kicking around the garage, soaking up the coolness of the shaded concrete, when he spied the fishing poles.
“How about some fishin’?” he asked.
“Naw, even the fishes are hot. Anyways, remember my Mom doesn’t like me playing down there.”
David scoffed, or at least I think he did. I was never really sure what the word meant, but I had read it enough times to understand a little. Nonetheless, I had never seen a real person snort and look surprised at the same time so I figured it must be scoffing.
“She told you never to go swimming there,” said David with his sly look that always meant trouble. “So then don’t swim. It doesn’t mean you can’t stick your feet in the water or wade in the shallows. Ernie said he saw a crawdaddy as big as his hand down there, and I want to find it. Besides,” he said smiling. “It’s always cooler in the woods. Maybe we won’t melt there.”
I laughed remembering yesterday when my Dad came home from work. I was in the tree and I was sure he saw me. He pulled into the driveway and stepped out of the car. He stopped at a puddle of water that ended up by the garage door, left there from when I’d gotten a drink from the hose. I watched as he dropped his briefcase and knelt down beside it. He hollered for Mom, who came running out.
“Jeffery. Oh My God, Ann. He melted. Our son melted.”
My Mom smiled and so did I. It was Dad trying to be funny again. Mom would set him straight.
“Oh My God. You’re right! He was just out here,” said my Mom. “I just checked on him.”
She fell to her knees beside my Dad and it looked like she’d started to cry. It was going too far now. I climbed down out of the tree and walked up to the puddle and stood on the other side. I put my hands on my waist like Mom always does when I’ve done something wrong.
“What should we do, honey?” asked my Dad. “We could get the ShopVac and suck him up. Maybe those folks at the hospital can put him back together.” He stared at the puddle and it was impossible for him not to see my reflection.
“I don’t think they can do that,” said my Mom, her voice low and sad. “Hey. We could save him until Christmas and build a snowboy out of him. Like Frosty. He could come to life.”
“That’s it,” said my Dad. “We’ll move to Alaska then, where our little snowboy could live forever.”
“Dad,” I said. “Frosty ain’t real. That would never work, anyways.”
“We’ll have to pack up his things. It’s sad all his toys will go to waste, maybe David would like his Super Nintendo,” said Mom.
“Mom!” I yelled. The joke had really gone too far, now.
“You know this wouldn’t have happened
if we had an air conditioner,” said Dad. He patted the water and said, “I’m sorry Jeffery. I am so sorry.”
“Dad, Mom. Stop this. It isn’t even funny.”
I think it was because I started crying, but they suddenly stopped their joke. It didn’t take long for us to laugh and hug, but the feeling I’d had when they pretended I wasn’t there was almost too scary to stand.
She slid beneath the surface, her body slithering around mossy rocks and under submerged branches, pondering the shimmering stillness above her. It had been too long since she’d added to her loneliness, to her collection. The fishes had long since lost their fear of her, generation upon generation growing and rotting as she patrolled her length of creek. Still, they instinctively avoided her cavern: water-filled and deep, with only a thin shaft of light spearing through the narrow entrance, spot-lighting the head of her fifth victim in a translucent green halo. The milky eyes stared, seeing but immobile, fixed in a body that was lost in a forever dream.
David skittered down the hill first, leaping through the tall ferns and yelping all the way down. I followed slower, picking my way through the brush and with the back of my hand, pushing away the long green fronds that tickled my nose. I hated walking where I couldn’t see what I was stepping on.
Grandpa used to tell me about the Little People before he went to heaven—stories about kingdoms within hills, toadstool houses and fairy rings. The Little People used to be everywhere, he’d said. The single greatest reason that no one ever saw the Little People anymore was because they kept getting squashed underfoot by ignorant humans.
I knew it was just my Grandpa’s way of telling me to be careful. Anyways, I believed in the Little People like I believed in the Witch of Cleghorn Canyon. There had been too many stories of missing children and black cats for us to not believe in her. That is, since before we started fourth grade. When I was a third grader I believed, but I wasn’t grown-up then. David said it was just a way for parents to control us. For once, I thought he was right.
“Come on, Jeffery! We’re going to catch the mother of all fish, and make Derek’s look like a minnow.”
I smiled and sped up a little. I wasn’t as competitive as David, but I would like nothing better than to show up Derek. He’d beat me up at least once every year of school. He was a fifth grader who had a new bike every year, lived in a big house with a TV in his room and caught the biggest fish ever found in Rapid Creek. No one believed there were any two and a half-foot trout in the water. Not, at least, until Derek hauled it up to the newspaper office and got his picture on the front page. David swore since the flood had washed the hatchery out back in 1972 that there had to be even more bigger fish.
I reached the bottom of the hill and broke into a run. Far ahead, David ran, holding the tip of his rod high in the air as he jumped and hooted over the pine needle-covered forest floor and fallen ponderosa pine. By the time I caught up, he was already drifting a kernel of yellow corn along the slow-moving water. Of course, he’d found the best spot. I silently cursed him and made my way downstream to the hole. It was where all the kids swam, but was deep enough to hide lunkers. As I turned, I caught David’s smirk. No one had ever caught any fish in the hole, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
She watched the yellow bait drift by, and toyed with it, tugging gently on the line. She watched through the prism of water as the boy jerked his pole and inspected the now-empty hook. She smiled at her game and knew she would soon add another. She made a few bubbles, each drifting languidly to the surface, enticing the child to her spot. Tempting. Luring.
I had a few nibbles, but nothing serious, probably just some stocked fingerlings. When I was little, I loved catching them. Like my Grandpa, I was a serious fisherman, now. I was a trout man: brown, rainbow, brook, splake, cutthroat. Cutthroats. Now, there was a mean sounding fish—a fish that could meet a man in an alley and make him stop fishing. I had never caught one before, but with a name like that, they had to be pretty mean. Even deadly.
It was cooler near the water. I attached a bobber to my line and let it drift towards the middle. I laid back and stared at the blue sky through the long pine and imagined my corn dangling above a lunker like a bone held high above a dog. I kept my grip on the pole and closed my eyes, waiting for the fish to leap up and swallow the kernel so I could show up David and Derek and prove that I was the world’s greatest fisherman.
She saw the feet, young and tender, moving slowly through the mud of the shallows, the toes wiggling as they contacted small rocks, crawdads and a snail. A boy’s fleshy hand dove and pierced the mud like a bird searching for food. She slithered closer until she could examine each fine blonde hair on the boy’s leg. All she needed was to reach out and touch, drag a fingernail along the instep and the child would dance with fear. She glanced toward his concentrating face, and grinned as his eyes passed over her, blinded by the glare of the sun upon the mirrored surface and his disbelief in her truth; never knowing that she was so near.
“Hey, Jeffery! Look, I got a big one.”
The yell jerked me upright and my shoes splashed into the water, soaking them. The chill of the creek cleared my head of daydreams. I checked my still bobber and then glanced over to where David was wading. He held up a crawdaddy big enough to be a lobster, its claws snipping at the air and attempting to take off a few of David’s wiggling fingers. It finally managed to snag one and David’s scream was followed quickly by a splash and then a high pitched, “Damn.”
I smiled and laid the pole carefully down, placing my butt upon the reel so if a lunker did hit, I’d have a second to keep my pole from going in. I untied my shoes and removed my soaked socks and laid them out to dry on the long grass beside me. Mom wouldn’t be happy if I had wet clothes. She probably wouldn’t let me down to the creek for months, if then.
I dangled my feet in the water and held the pole in my lap. The coolness ran up my legs and sent shivers of goosebumps along my skin. I watched as David splashed and fell in the shallows, chasing his Mountain Lobster. The funny scene tore through the lingering strangeness of my dream—a dream of a woman, just beneath the water watching us and waiting. My feet stilled their wagging, dead and wakeless like my bobber and I fought the urge to jerk them from the water. The urge to run. But I was a fourth grader now. The dream was just a dream.
She felt the tug of belief and allowed it to pull her down the creek and into the place where the children swam; the place where she teased their legs and toes, tickling them until they screamed with fearful laughter, each unsure if it was a leaf, or a fish or a snake, never once knowing the truth. This was the one. She felt his thoughts lurking upon her existence and sent feelers into his soul, massaging his memories and divining his needs.
When the bobber disappeared, I was so surprised at the hole having a fish that I stared like I was stupid. The second time, however, I jerked the pole and felt the hook set. I stood up, almost slipping into the water and held the tip of the rod high, ready for the fish to jump and lower it. It was all about being calm, my Grandpa had said. Too many as they are reeling in their catch get excited and lose.
Be calm. Breathe deep. Play it slowly.
The fish pulled hard and visions of Derek’s disappointed face were foremost in my mind. This one was a lunker. Definitely the biggest I had ever hooked. Its jerks and pulls inched me forward as my wet feet slipped on the grass. There was no way I would let go, though. This was not the mother of all fishes, it was the father of all fishes and it was all mine.
Patience.
I screamed for David, but didn’t look. I knew the picture of my struggle was enough information for even his dense skull. I traded tugs and whatever was at the end of my line was an equal. Maybe it was a cutthroat— one of those fish my Dad talked about. I dreamed the dream of all fisherman as they played with unknown catches. I was ready.
But I wasn’t. It was a tremendous tug that jerked me into the hole— a tug by something immensely more powerful than me. A tug t
hat didn’t even allow me a chance to let go. Before I hit the water, I heard David’s scream and then the silence of the water. As I hit, I let go of the rod, but I’d already fallen deep. My Mom was going to be so pissed. She’d made me promise never to swim here. And no matter how much I argued, she’d never believe my fish story.
I kicked up, my clothes heavy and dragging. I looked through the green water to the sun shining brightly above and made that my goal. I was almost there when the hand grabbed my ankle. It pulled me, reeling me in. I kicked and fought for the surface, my lungs about to pop. I wanted to cry, to scream, but I knew if I opened my mouth, I would surely drown. The hand pulled down and down until I felt the muddy silt bottom. With one leg perched, I used my hands to spin me around and see what had grabbed my leg.
Of all the things I’d imagined in nightmares and dreams of dead things, the woman who gripped my leg was the worst and my last.
She hovered just above the bottom, her long red hair catching the small currents as her body wound behind her. Eyes as round and milky as dead fish examined me. Her face was old, like a great grandma, but without the necessary love. Her smile was more of a frown, but even so, I could tell she was happy—happy that she’d reeled me in.
It was then that I screamed and my lungs filled with water.
My Mom visits the spot, now. She comes almost every day. I call to her and tell her I love her, but she is closed to me. When the sun is perfect, it pierces the depths to my face and I feel its far away warmth and remember life. Especially David, Super Nintendo and my Grandfather’s tales of things that couldn’t be. Other than when the kids come swimming, their legs dangling just a few feet from where I sit, my Mother’s visits make me the happiest. I know she doesn’t understand. I know she doesn’t know that I’m still here. She believes that I’m really dead—lost. It is the witch. It is her doing. She keeps me and the others so she won’t be so lonely. I have spoken to them in my forever dreams and they tell me their stories. They are all like me. They believed. They were good. It is what the witch needs, what feeds her. It is our dreams of things we can’t have, things dead to us. It is our dreams of dead things that allow her to live.